Chapter 109: Moby Dick

After finding leaks in the barrels containing oil Starbuck tells Ahab and eventually Ahab comands that the barrels be fixed. However Ishmael believes that he only does this so that there isn't an uproar form the crew. Just as he did when he decided that he would go for a few other whales besides just Moby Dick. Another sign that Ahab has gone completely insane with passion for killing Moby Dick, he is willing to risk their whole supply of oil and let down hundreds of people at home who are part owners of the ship.

Chapter 108: Moby Dick

"Yes, now that i think of it, here's his bedfellow"

The carpenter talks of the whale bone leg being Ahab's bedmate which is actually true in a sense. Ahab does have a wife but he has pretty much given them up to go after whales or Moby Dick. So he has "married" into whaling and probably loves whaling more than he does his wife.

Chapter 107: Moby Dick

The chapter talks of the carpenter as more of a thing than a person only good for fixing things and other than that is just there. The carpenter is an example of what whaling can do to a person. The carpenter is on the whaling ship brain washed only to do one thing in the aid of catching whales to the point where thats all he does and doesn't live anything else. (this chapter was above my head)

Chapter 106: Moby Dick

In this chapter Ishmeal tells about Ahab falling off of his whale bone leg and wounding him near the groin. This is very ironic, considering that Ahabs leg was taken from him by a whale, and then when he tries to use a whale to fix his leg, it "bites" him back. The motif of the whale eluding or getting revenge of the whaler by sinking, wounding, or destroying a boat appears again.

Chapter 105: Moby Dick

Ishmael explains that the whale has been around since the dinosaurs and has lasted through hundreds of years of hunting. The whale has more room to live in that twice the land and if it were to flood again, like in the biblical matter, every animal would die but the whale. The idea of being older than all others but basically untouchable in the idea of extinction gives the whale another sense of power.

Chapter 104: Moby Dick

..."not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then he whole world was the whale's;"

The sentence makes it sound as though the whale is the creator much like the Native story of Raven and before Raven got the sun there was nothing. Once again the whale is made out to be of a god-like creature so much that even churches are built out of there bones not just because of their strength but because their "holy".

Chapter 103: Moby Dick

About half into the chapter Ishmael realizes that you cannot "decipher" a whale merely form his skeleton because you are missing the blubber, the skin, and everything else that would have rotted away. Considering the gigantic size of a whale, he claims the largest of about ninety tons, that it is impossible to study one falling short of taking months to drag one on to land and maybe hitting the tide right get in on dry land. This gives the whale another feeling of god-like stature because nobody really knows about it.