Moby-Dick · Chapter
LXVI: The Shark Massacre explained
After capturing a sperm whale, the Pequod's crew must keep an anchor-watch to fend off a massive swarm of sharks drawn to the carcass.
What happens
After capturing a sperm whale, the Pequod's crew must keep an anchor-watch to fend off a massive swarm of sharks drawn to the carcass. Queequeg and another sailor use whaling-spades to kill the sharks in a brutal, chaotic nighttime battle, revealing the creatures' incredible ferocity and a strange, lingering vitality even after death. Queequeg is injured by a supposedly dead shark, leading to his bitter reflection on the shark's creator.
Themes in this chapter
Man vs. Nature
The crew's violent, ongoing struggle against the voracious shark swarm represents a raw, physical conflict with a hostile natural world.
Religion and Spirituality
Queequeg's injury leads him to question and condemn the nature of the divine creator, blurring the lines between different gods and attributing a malicious intent to whichever one made the shark.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“any man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.”
The sea was so thick with sharks around the whale carcass that it looked like a cheese infested with maggots.
Vivid simile emphasizing the overwhelming number and disturbing nature of the sharks.
“"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fiji god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."”
Queequeg says he doesn't care which specific god created the shark, whether a Fijian or a Nantucket god, but that god must be a damned savage.
Queequeg's pragmatic theology judges the creator by the viciousness of the creation, equating divine malice with savagery.