ETYMOLOGY Practice Quiz — Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
by Herman Melville — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: ETYMOLOGY
Who is credited with supplying the Etymology section?
A Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.
Who is credited with supplying the Extracts section?
A Sub-Sub-Librarian.
How is the Usher physically described?
He is described as pale and threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain.
What does the Usher dust with his handkerchief?
His old lexicons and grammars. The handkerchief is embellished with the flags of all the known nations of the world.
Why does the Usher enjoy dusting his old grammars?
It somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
What is the Greek word for whale listed in the Etymology?
Ketos.
What is the Latin word for whale listed in the Etymology?
Cetus.
What are the Fegee and Erromangoan words for whale?
Pekee-Nuee-Nuee in both languages.
According to Webster's Dictionary as quoted in the Etymology, what does the word "whale" derive from?
It derives from the Danish hvalt, meaning arched or vaulted, and relates to the concept of roundness or rolling.
What does the Hakluyt quote criticize people for omitting from the word "whale-fish"?
The letter H, which Hakluyt says almost alone makes the signification of the word.
What is the Sub-Sub-Librarian compared to by the narrator?
A painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil.
What is the first source quoted in the Extracts section?
Genesis, with the line "And God created great whales."
What Hobbes work is quoted in the Extracts, and what does it compare to a whale?
The opening of Leviathan, which compares the Commonwealth or State to a great Leviathan, an artificial man.
What famous Shakespeare line about a whale appears in the Extracts?
"Very like a whale" from Hamlet.
What promise does the narrator make to the Sub-Sub about the afterlife?
That friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens and making refugees of Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael for the Sub-Sub's coming.
What theme is introduced through the characterization of the Usher and Sub-Sub?
The limits of human knowledge and the futility yet valor of scholarly attempts to comprehend nature.
What does the narrator warn readers not to take the Extracts as?
Veritable gospel cetology. The narrator says readers must not take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements for absolute truth.
What literary device does Melville use by attributing the scholarly sections to fictional failed academics?
Irony. By crediting the work to pathetic figures, Melville undercuts the authority of the scholarly apparatus while still presenting it.
What Owen Chace quotation appears in the Extracts?
"My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" "We have been stove by a whale," from the Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex.
How does the catalogue of Extracts function as a literary device?
It serves as an epic invocation or catalogue, placing Moby-Dick in conversation with the entire Western literary tradition from the Bible to contemporary whaling accounts.
What is the significance of the Extracts moving from sacred texts to whaling narratives?
The progression mirrors the novel's blend of the spiritual and the practical, showing the whale as both a symbol in religious and literary tradition and a real creature hunted for commercial purposes.
What does the narrator say about the "hopeless, sallow tribe" to which the Sub-Sub belongs?
That no wine of this world will ever warm them, and even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong for them.
What Milton work is quoted in the Extracts, and what does it call the whale?
Paradise Lost, which calls the whale "that sea beast Leviathan" and "hugest of living creatures" that swims the ocean stream.
What does Thomas Jefferson call the Sperm Whale in his quoted memorial?
An active, fierce animal that requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.