NCHS AP English Language

question number four by jeff annis

“Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requiresta little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computer their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch, then let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”

Ahab is trying to get it out of the crew’s mind that money is the reason they all set sails on this voyage. He talks about his vengeance fetching a great premium, which means that killing Moby Dick is a far greater payoff than money ever could be. The only thing is the crew doesn’t have the same disdain for the whale, they are most likely interested in money, and we hear this opinion from Starbuck throughout Ahab’s speech.

“I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn- living, breathing picture painted by the sun. The pagan leopards- the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubs! He laughs! See yonder Chilian! He snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, the one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!”

Ahab sounds like he is addressing the crew at first, but starts to address himself in the third person and other crew members as if they cannot hear them. I think he’s saying how people on land don’t appreciate what they are trying to do. Ahab asks himself is in concurrence with him on the matter of Moby Dick, and then points out some examples of people that question his motives, and than seems to address Starbuck directly when he says one sapling can’t withstand a hurricane, or one person can’t change the mind of an entire crew.

“In vain! Cried Ahab; “but, maybe, ‘tis well. For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock , then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cup-bearers to my three pagan kinsmen there- yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooners. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the fete of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! Your own condescension, that shall bend yet to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw your poles, ye harpooners!”

Ahab calls out his three best harpooners on the ship and tells them that, like the pope, he will become equal with them by a blood oath. Soon after this quote they all drink from their harpoons which Ahab had filled with liquor and drops of his own blood. They swear to see their journey through to the end, and if they don’t kill the whale, then they have failed themselves as well as God.

“Hark ye yet again, - the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. but in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed-there, some unkown but still reasoning thing puts forht the moulding of its features from behind the unreasoning mask."

This statement means that most people put up a fake image or a mask. Ahab wants everyone to start tearing down those masks instead of getting frustrated with each other, maybe as a way to distract the men from the pointlessness of their trip.

posted by NCHS AP English Language III @ 9:04 AM