1. Course Title: American Novel
Course Code: ENG-3623
PRESENTATION
ON CHAPTER64, 65 & 66 FROM
MOBY-DICK
6/21/2014
2. Chapter 64: Stubb’s Supper
Most whalemen do not enjoy
whale meat; Stubb, however,
wants to dine on a steak from
his whale.
Stubb feels a desire to eat a
Wale-steak, and so he gets
one cooked by ships cook.
Stubb’s behavior is here
compare to the behaviour of
the greedy and gluttonous
sharks which are already
busy attacking the dead
whale and eating its flesh.
While he devours his steak,
sharks dine on the carcass of the
whale, which has been tied fast
to the ship. Stubb calls on the
black cook, Fleece, to make his
supper; he also demands that
the cook order the sharks to stop
eating the whale flesh.
The cook delivers a sermon to
the sharks, telling them that they
ought to be more civilized. Stubb
then proceeds to torment the
cook, who likens Stubb to a6/21/2014
3. Chapter 65: The Whale as a
Dish
Ishmael offers a culinary
history of the whale.
He remarks that no one
except for Stubb and the
Eskimos still eat it.
Deterrents include the
exceedingly rich quality of
the meat and its prodigious
quantities.
Furthermore, it seems wrong
to eat whale because, though
hunting the whale makes the
meat a “noble dish,” one has
to eat the meat by the light of
a lamp that burns the whale’s
oil.
But, Ishmael ponders,
perhaps this adding of insult
to injury isn’t so rare: his
readers probably eat beef
with a knife made from the
bone of oxen and pick their
teeth after eating goose with
a goose feather.
6/21/2014
4. Chapter 66: The Shark
Massacre
The behaviour of the
sharks which have
gathered in large
numbers round the
pequod to eat the flesh of
the dead Whale.
The crew lashes the
sperm whale they have
caught to the side of the
ship to be dealt with in
daylight.
But the men are forced to
poke with spades or kill the
numerous sharks that
attempt to devour the whale
carcass.
Ishmael warns that it is
unwise “to meddle with the
corpses and ghosts of
these creatures”: Queequeg
nearly has his hand cut off
by the sharp teeth of one
dead shark hoisted onto the
ship for its skin. 6/21/2014
