On the third day of the chase, Ahab sights Moby Dick at noon, and sharks appear,

as well. Ahab lowers his boat for a final time, leaving Starbuck again on board
. Moby Dick breaches and destroys two boats. Fedallah's corpse, still entangled
in the fouled lines, is lashed to the whale's back, so Moby Dick turns out to be
the hearse Fedallah prophesied. "Possessed by all the fallen angels", Ahab plan
ts his harpoon in the whale's flank. Moby Dick smites the whaleboat, tossing its
men into the sea. Only Ishmael is unable to return to the boat. He is left behi
nd in the sea, and so is the only crewman of the Pequod to survive the final enc
ounter. The whale now fatally attacks the Pequod. Ahab then realizes that the de
stroyed ship is the hearse made of American wood in Fedallah's prophesy. The wha
le returns to Ahab, who stabs at him again. The line loops around Ahab's neck, a
nd as the stricken whale swims away, the captain is drawn with him out of sight.
Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface, the only thing to escape the vortex whe
n Pequod sank. For an entire day, Ishmael floats on it, and then the Rachel, sti
ll looking for its lost seamen, rescues him.
Structure[edit]
Point of view[edit]
Ishmael is the narrator, shaping his story with use of many different genres inc
luding sermons, stage plays, soliloquies, and emblematical readings.[5] Repeated
ly, Ishmael refers to his writing of the book: "'But how can I hope to explain m
yself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all th
ese chapters might be naught.'"[6] Scholar John Bryant calls him the novel's "ce
ntral consciousness and narrative voice."[7] Bezanson first distinguishes Ishmae
l as narrator from Ishmael as character, whom he calls "forecastle Ishmael", and
who is the younger Ishmael of some years ago. Narrator Ishmael, then, is "merel
y young Ishmael grown older."[5] A second distinction avoids confusion of either
of both Ishmaels with the author Herman Melville. Bezanson warns readers to "re
sist any one-to-one equation of Melville and Ishmael."[8]
Chapter structure[edit]
According to critic Walter Bezanson, the chapter structure can be divided into "
chapter sequences", "chapter clusters", and "balancing chapters". The simplest s
equences are of narrative progression, then sequences of theme such as the three
chapters on whale painting, and sequences of structural similarity, such as the
five dramatic chapters beginning with "The Quarter-Deck" or the four chapters b
eginning with "The Candles". Chapter clusters are the chapters on the significan
ce of the colour white, and those on the meaning of fire. Balancing chapters are
chapters of opposites, such as "Loomings" versus the "Epilogue," or similars, s
uch as "The Quarter-Deck" and "The Candles".[9]
Scholar Lawrence Buell describes the arrangement of the non-narrative chapters a
s structured around three patterns: first, the nine meetings of the Pequod with
ships that have encountered Moby Dick. Each has been more and more severely dama
ged, foreshadowing the Pequod's own fate. Second, the increasingly impressive en
counters with whales. In the early encounters, the whaleboats hardly make contac
t; later there are false alarms and routine chases; finally, the massive assembl
ing of whales at the edges of the China Sea in "The Grand Armada". A typhoon nea
r Japan sets the stage for Ahab's confrontation with Moby Dick. The third patter
n is the cetological documentation, so lavish that it can be divided into two su
bpatterns. These chapters start with the ancient history of whaling and a biblio
graphical classification of whales, getting closer with second-hand stories of t
he evil of whales in general and of Moby Dick in particular, a chronologically o
rdered commentary on pictures of whales. The climax to this section is chapter 5
7, "Of whales in paint etc.", which begins with the humble (a beggar in London)
and ends with the sublime (the constellation Cetus). The next chapter ("Brit"),
thus the other half of this pattern, begins with the book's first description of
 live whales, and next the anatomy of the sperm whale is studied, more or less f
rom front to rear and from outer to inner parts, all the way down to the skeleto
n. Two concluding chapters set forth the whale's evolution as a species and clai
m its eternal nature.[3]
Some "ten or more" of the chapters on whale killings, beginning at two-fifths of
the book, are developed enough to be called "events". As Bezanson writes, "in e
ach case a killing provokes either a chapter sequence or a chapter cluster of ce
tological lore growing out of the circumstance of the particular killing," thus
these killings are "structural occasions for ordering the whaling essays and ser
mons".[10]
Buell observes that the "narrative architecture" is an "idiosyncratic variant of
the bipolar observer/hero narrative", that is, the novel is structured around t
he two main characters, Ahab and Ishmael, who are intertwined and contrasted wit
h each other, with Ishmael the observer and narrator.[11] As the story of Ishmae
l, remarks Robert Milder, it is a "narrative of education".[12]
Bryant and Springer find that the book is structured around the two consciousnes
ses of Ahab and Ishmael, with Ahab as a force of linearity and Ishmael a force o
f digression.[13] While both have an angry sense of being orphaned, they try to
come to terms with this hole in their beings in different ways: Ahab with violen
ce, Ishmael with meditation. And while the plot in Moby-Dick may be driven by Ah
ab's anger, Ishmael's desire to get a hold of the "ungraspable" accounts for the
novel's lyricism.[14] Buell sees a double quest in the book: Ahab's is to hunt
Moby Dick, Ishmael's is "to understand what to make of both whale and hunt".[11]
One of the most distinctive features of the book is the variety of genres. Bezan
son mentions sermons, dreams, travel account, autobiography, Elizabethan plays,
and epic poetry.[15] He calls Ishmael's explanatory footnotes to establish the d
ocumentary genre "a Nabokovian touch".[16]
The nine meetings with other ships[edit]
A significant structural device is the series of nine meetings (gams) between th
e Pequod and other ships. These meetings are important in three ways. First, the
ir placement in the narrative. The initial two meetings and the last two are bot
h close to each other. The central group of five gams are separated by about 12
chapters, more or less. This pattern provides a structural element, remarks Beza
nson, as if the encounters were "bones to the book's flesh". Second, Ahab's deve
loping responses to the meetings plot the "rising curve of his passion" and of h
is monomania. Third, in contrast to Ahab, Ishmael interprets the significance of
each ship individually: "each ship is a scroll which the narrator unrolls and r
eads."[10] Bezanson sees no single way to account for the meaning of all of thes
e ships. Instead, they may be interpreted as "a group of metaphysical parables,
a series of biblical analogues, a masque of the situation confronting man, a pag
eant of the humors within men, a parade of the nations, and so forth,'as well as
concrete and symbolic ways of thinking about the White Whale".[17]
Scholar Nathalia Wright sees the meetings and the significance of the vessels al
ong other lines. She singles out the four vessels which have already encountered
Moby Dick. The first, the Jeroboam, is named after the predecessor of the bibli
cal King Ahab. Her "prophetic" fate is "a message of warning to all who follow,
articulated by Gabriel and vindicated by the Samuel Enderby, the Rachel, the Del
ight, and at last the Pequod". None of the other ships has been completely destr
oyed because none of their captains shared Ahab's monomania; the fate of the Jer
oboam reinforces the structural parallel between Ahab and his biblical namesake:
"Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of
Israel that were before him" (I Kings 16:33).[18]