One Hundred Thirty-Six Cards
Moby-Dick has a reputation. Everyone says the whale story keeps stopping for whale facts. So I did what the whiteboard is for. I sorted every chapter into two piles, story and lore. That is one hundred thirty-five chapters plus an epilogue. Full spoilers ahead, the ending included.
Here is the answer. Seventy-three sections are story. Sixty-three are lore. Count by words and it is sixty percent story, forty percent lore. So the rumor is true, but lore is not most of the book. And the piles are lumpy. The lore is thickest in the middle, and in the last quarter it almost vanishes.
The Sorting Rule
The text is Project Gutenberg ebook twenty-seven oh one, Moby Dick, or The Whale, by Herman Melville. I counted words from chapter one to the epilogue and left out the license, the etymology and the extracts. That comes to about two hundred eight thousand words.
My rule has two lines. If more than half a chapter is the narrator explaining, arguing or reflecting, it is lore. If the main business is people acting or talking in a scene, it is story. That includes speeches, and the tales that sailors tell each other.
In my reading, about ten borderline chapters could flip. So this is an honest sort, not a law of nature. Chapters twenty-six and twenty-seven, the profiles of the officers and harpooneers, went to lore, because they describe and nobody acts. One more note. The book uses period language about some of its crew that I will not repeat here. I name people, places and jobs, and nothing else.
The Map In Three Slices
Split the book into thirds by chapter number and the lumps show. Chapters one to forty-five have twenty lore chapters. Chapters forty-six to ninety have twenty-seven. Chapters ninety-one to the epilogue have sixteen. So the middle third is the heaviest, and the last third is the lightest.
Two more counts. The average story chapter runs about seventeen hundred words, and the average lore chapter about thirteen hundred. So lore chapters are shorter, which is why they are forty-six percent of the chapters but forty percent of the words.
The longest lore chapter is chapter thirty-two, the whale classification, at about five thousand words. The shortest chapter in the book is chapter one hundred twenty-two, just forty-four words of thunder and lightning.
Before The Ship Sails
The story opens with three famous words, Call me Ishmael. He goes to New Bedford, shares a bed at the Spouter Inn with a harpooneer named Queequeg, and by chapter ten they are close friends. Father Mapple preaches on Jonah. I counted that sermon as story, because it retells Jonah’s tale beat by beat. Then the two friends cross to Nantucket.
Ishmael signs on the whaler Pequod. Its owners, Peleg and Bildad, give him the three hundredth lay, a tiny share of the profits, and Queequeg gets the ninetieth. A stranger named Elijah hints at trouble with the captain, and the ship sails on Christmas.
That happens in chapter twenty-two, after thirty-seven thousand words, about eighteen percent of the book. Of those twenty-two chapters, fifteen are story and seven are lore. The lore here is a walk through town, a chapel, the pulpit and an essay on Nantucket. And the captain has not appeared yet.
The Crew Ledger
Here is the ledger. Captain Ahab, with an ivory leg. Starbuck, chief mate, from Nantucket. Stubb, second mate, from Cape Cod, with his pipe. Flask, third mate, from Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard.
Each mate leads a boat, and each has a harpooneer. Queequeg pulls for Starbuck. Tashtego, from Gay Head, pulls for Stubb. Daggoo, from Africa, pulls for Flask. That is four boats’ worth of the crew, and one more is coming.
Ahab has a boat too. In chapter forty-eight, five strangers appear on deck, Fedallah and four oarsmen from Manila, whom Ahab brought aboard in secret. Around them are Pip, a boy from Alabama with a tambourine, Dough-Boy the steward, Fleece the cook, and Perth the blacksmith. Remember this list. We will fill in a fate column at the end.
Ahab Arrives
Ahab walks on deck in chapter twenty-eight, twenty-one percent of the way in. In chapter thirty he throws his pipe into the sea. Then the book stops for four lore chapters in a row, thirty-two to thirty-five. They cover how to classify whales, the rank of the harpooneers, the dinner table order and standing watch at the masthead.
Only then, in chapter thirty-six, does Ahab nail a sixteen dollar gold coin to the mast. It goes to whoever first sights a white whale. He tells the crew about Moby Dick, Starbuck objects, and the crew swear to hunt the whale. Three short chapters follow where Ahab, Starbuck and Stubb each talk to themselves.
Then more lore. The next chapters explain the whale’s reputation and why its whiteness is terrifying. The mission is set, and the book keeps stopping to look at the thing from every side.
The Long Middle
This is where the rumor comes from. Take chapters forty-six to ninety, forty-five chapters. Twenty-seven are lore. That is the lumpiest stretch of the book.
It still has story. Chapter forty-eight is the first chase, and the first look at Ahab’s secret boat crew. Chapter fifty-two is the Albatross, the first ship they meet, whose captain drops his speaking trumpet. Chapter fifty-four is the longest in the book at about eight thousand words, a mutiny tale told inside the story.
In chapter seventy-one, a captain named Mayhew says Moby Dick killed his mate. Asked if he will hunt the whale, Ahab says aye. Stubb kills a sperm whale in chapter sixty-one, the halfway mark by words. Between the scenes come whale pictures, whale lines and whale heads.
Then the story pops back up. Tashtego falls into a whale’s head and Queequeg dives to save him. In chapter eighty-seven, pirates chase the ship, and the boats slip into a herd of whales. In chapter ninety-three, Pip jumps from Stubb’s boat twice, and the second time Stubb leaves him afloat. Pip is rescued, but he is never the same.
The Last Quarter
Now the pile changes. Chapter ninety-nine, The Doubloon, has each crew member read the coin. Chapter one hundred, the Samuel Enderby, brings a captain who lost an arm to Moby Dick and says leave him alone. Then comes the last big lore run, chapters one hundred one to one hundred seven. Seven in a row.
After that, the story takes over. Ahab has the blacksmith forge a harpoon and tempers it in blood. In chapter one hundred seventeen, Fedallah makes two promises. Ahab will see two hearses first, one not made by hands and one of American wood. And only hemp can kill him.
A typhoon sets the masts aglow. Queequeg’s coffin becomes a life-buoy. The Bachelor, a happy ship full of oil, invites Ahab aboard, and he waves it off. The Rachel begs him to help find a lost son, and he refuses. The Delight is burying a man killed by Moby Dick. From chapter one hundred fifteen to the epilogue, twenty-two sections in a row, there is no lore at all. Every one is story.
Three Days
Chapter one hundred thirty-three. Ahab raises Moby Dick himself and claims the doubloon. Day one, the whale bites Ahab’s boat in two. Ahab is spilled into the sea and fished out alive.
Starbuck keeps the ship on all three days, and by the second he is begging Ahab to stop. Day two, the whale tangles the lines and smashes the boats. Ahab’s ivory leg snaps. Fedallah is missing, dragged under in the lines. The part of his promise about going first has come true.
Day three. Starbuck weeps and shakes Ahab’s hand. Fedallah is found lashed to the whale’s back, the first hearse. The whale rams the Pequod and sinks her, the second hearse. Ahab’s last harpoon line catches his neck and drags him out of the boat. That is the whole chase, three chapters, about eleven thousand words, five percent of the book.
Who Is Left
Now the ledger fills in. Ahab, dragged out by his own line. Fedallah, lost on day two. Starbuck, Stubb and Flask, on the sinking ship. Tashtego, still nailing a flag to the mast, goes down with it. Queequeg and Daggoo are at their lookouts as the water rises.
One man lives. The epilogue is only about two hundred seventy words. Ishmael took the empty oar in Ahab’s boat after Fedallah vanished, and was thrown clear on the last day.
The sinking ship leaves a quiet pool, and Queequeg’s coffin life-buoy pops up beside him. He floats for a day and a night, and then the Rachel picks him up, still searching. One more orphan.
What You Can Skip
Now my opinion, and it is a draft. In my view, sixteen chapters can be skipped without losing the thread. Chapter thirty-two, the whale classification. The three chapters on whale pictures, fifty-five to fifty-seven. Whale line, dart and crotch. Most of the head run, seventy-four to eighty. And the bones, one hundred three to one hundred five. That is about twenty-two thousand words, ten percent. My reason is simple. These chapters teach you facts about whales, and the plot never needs them.
If you read only thirteen sections, here is my pick. Chapters one, two, three, nine, sixteen, thirty-six, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred twenty-eight, the three chase chapters, and the epilogue. That is nineteen percent of the words.
Your Turn
Which lore chapter would you save from my skip list? Tell me in the comments, and tell me if you would have sorted a borderline chapter the other way. I would love to see your own pile. Mine is the chapter on the whiteness of the whale, which I kept off the list.
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