Description
In 1841, a sailor named Ishmael wanders to the New England town of New Bedford, Massachusetts to sign on a whaling ship. In the inn where he is staying for the night, he is forced to share his room with a Pacific Islander and harponeer named Queequeg, whom he befriends after a tense first meeting. The next morning, the two of them hire onto a whaling ship named Pequod, which is commanded by grim Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with hunting and killing a legendary white-skinned whale named Moby Dick, who was responsible for severing Ahab's left leg. Just before their departure, Ishmael and Queequeg encounter a man named Elijah, who delivers an ominous warning about Ahab and that all but one of the crew who follow him will find their deaths on this voyage.
As the ship casts off, and for some time afterwards, Ahab remains unseen until he finally appears to align his crew to the hunt for Moby Dick and sets course for the Bikini Atoll, where the whale is said to dwell. While the crew reaps a fair bounty of oil on their journey, Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick remains foremost in his mind. When the captain of a passing ship, who recently lost his hand to the white whale, informs Ahab on Moby Dick's latest whereabouts near the coast of Madagascar, Ahab immediately breaks off a particularly successful hunt, unsettling his crew, particularly his chief mate Starbuck. Starbuck suggests to his fellow officers Stubb and Flask to wrest command of the Pequod from Ahab, which the two refuse.
As the Pequod nears the atoll, a man falls from the ship's mast into the sea and disappears. Right afterwards, the Pequod is stuck in slack water for days. Casting bones to read his future, Queequeg foresees his death and orders the ship's carpenter to make him a coffin, before he sits down to await his demise. When one of the crew prepares to cut Queequeg's skin for fun, Ishmael rises to his friend's defense, prompting Queequeg to break his death reverie and defend Ishmael. Just then, Moby Dick briefly appears before the ship and escapes before the Pequod crew can attack him.
After rowing the ship out of the becalmed area, Ahab resumes the hunt. They encounter the Rachel, another whaler from New Bedford, whose captain, Gardiner, asks Ahab to help search for his son, who was carried off by Moby Dick; Ahab refuses his aid and departs. When the Pequod hits a typhoon, Ahab uses the gale to speed the chase, endangering the ship. Starbuck decided to depose Ahab by force, but relents when in a rare humane moment Ahab reminisces about his self-destructive obsession for revenge.
Right after this conversation, a strange omen portends the fulfillment of Elijah's baleful prophecy. Moby Dick reappears, and the Pequod crew sets out in their boats to bring him down. In the chaotic altercation, Moby Dick destroys Ahab's boat, but Ahab climbs onto the whale's back and stabs him until Moby Dick submerges, entangling Ahab in the harpoon lines on his back and drowning him. Instead of calling off the hunt, Starbuck orders the men to continue. Moby Dick attacks the boats, smashing them and killing the men; he then rams and sinks the Pequod before disappearing. Ishmael, the only survivor, manages to cling onto Queequeg's coffin until he is found and picked up by the Rachel.
