Moby-Dick · Chapter
II: The Carpetbag explained
Ishmael arrives in New Bedford, intending to sail from Nantucket.
What happens
Ishmael arrives in New Bedford, intending to sail from Nantucket. Stranded for the weekend, he searches the cold, dark, and deserted waterfront for cheap lodging, passing by lively but expensive inns and stumbling into a solemn negro church. His search ends when he finds the ominous-looking and dilapidated Spouter-Inn.
Themes in this chapter
Isolation and Community
Ishmael's solitary arrival in an unfamiliar, cold, and seemingly deserted town, contrasted with the closed communities of the expensive inns and the intense congregation of the negro church.
Race and Cultural Difference
Ishmael's stark, gothic description of the negro church and its congregation, framing them as foreign and unsettling from his outsider perspective.
Characters to notice
- Ishmael
The narrator, arriving alone in New Bedford with little money, searching for lodging and reflecting philosophically on his surroundings.
- Peter Coffin
Mentioned as the proprietor of the Spouter-Inn, his name noted as ominously common in Nantucket.
Key passages
“It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless.”
The night was grim, dark, and bitterly cold.
Sets the bleak, oppressive mood for Ishmael's arrival.
“It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit.”
The scene looked like a dark assembly in hell, with many faces turning to look and a preacher like an angel of doom thumping a bible.
Ishmael's vivid, racially charged impression of the negro church.
“"The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin." Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connection, thought I.”
Seeing the sign for the Spouter-Inn run by Peter Coffin, Ishmael finds the names foreboding for a whaling voyage.
Highlights the theme of foreshadowing and mortality linked to whaling.