The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [261]
Thus does the great quest approach its climax, and in keeping with so many other Quest stories, this unfolds through three stages. But its prelude is the dawn of another perfect, peaceful day, when `the firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-prevading azure'; the `pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look'; while `hither and thither, on high, glided the snowwhite wings of small, unspeckled birds' like the `gentle thoughts of the feminine air' above `the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea'. In gender terms, never before in the story has the opposition of `light feminine' and `dark masculine' been made so explicit.
This leads into `The Chase - The First Day', when the cry goes up `There she blows! A hump like a snowhill! It is Moby Dick!' As the boats are launched, we finally catch our first glimpse of this fearsome, fabulous monster towards which all the story has been leading us - and what a shock it provides. Our first vision of the whale is one of inexpressible majesty and peace, as we see him sliding along, set in a ring of `finest, fleecy' foam, attended by `hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea'. 'A gentle joyousness - a mighty mildness of repose' invests `the gliding whale. Not Jove himself `did surpass the glorified White Whale, as he so divinely swam'. Far from being the fearful deformed monster we have been led to expect, Moby Dick is god-like: the image of a mighty creature at one with life and with nature; in perfect harmony with the great spirit that moves the universe; a complete symbol of the transcendent Self. And the total opposite to this is that dark, murderous embodiment of the human ego personified in the demonic madman now bent on his destruction.
Precisely because everything in Ahab's world is now possessed by the dark inversion, once the struggle begins we now see only the other side of that life force which Moby Dick represents, the dark, destructive side of nature itself. On the first day, three boats are launched, Ahab's in the lead, and the whale comes up underneath it, snapping it in two with his jaws. Ahab is thrown into the water, the others cling to the wreckage, until all are rescued. Next morning, in `The Chase - The Second Day', Moby Dick is again sighted. Again three boats are launched and this time the three harpooners all land their darts in his side. The whale turns on them in fury, wrecking two boats and overturning the third, Ahab's, so that his ivory pegleg is shattered. As they are again picked up by the Pequod, Fedallah has vanished, and it is thought he had been tugged under by Ahab's own harpoon line.
In `The Chase - The Third Day, the pursuit resumes in the afternoon, again with three boats, one captained by Ahab. As the enraged whale attacks and damages the two others, this reveals the body of Fedallah lashed to his side by the harpoon line, prompting Ahab to recognise this as the first hearse, `not made with mortal hands', the dead man had prophesied. From the third boat Ahab hurls his harpoon, goading Moby Dick to roll against his boat, throwing three men overboard. Finally, maddened beyond endurance, the whale launches himself with full force against the Pequod itself, fatally crushing its hull. As the ship begins to sink, Ahab recognises it as `the second hearse', made from wood grown in America. Ahab hurls another harpoon but, as the whale dashes forward, the rope catches him round the neck, plunging him into the depths. The Pequod sinks into a swirling vortex, carrying the rest of the crew with it, and `the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago'.
In a brief epilogue, we learn that Ishmael had been one of the three men from Ahab's boat thrown overboard. As he