# XIV: Nantucket explained — Moby-Dick

> Chapter companion for Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

## What happens

The Pequod arrives at Nantucket. The narrator launches into a rhapsodic, hyperbolic description of the island's extreme isolation and sandy, barren nature, contrasting it with the mainland. He recounts the legendary story of its settlement by Native Americans and traces the Nantucketers' evolution from shore gatherers to the world's preeminent whalers, who treat the entire ocean as their domain and home.

## Themes in this chapter

### Man vs. Nature

The chapter celebrates the Nantucketers' conquest of the sea and their eternal war against the whale, framing it as a heroic, Alexander-like overrunning of the 'watery world.'

### Isolation and Community

Nantucket is depicted as the ultimate isolated, 'utter island,' which forges a unique, insular community whose identity and livelihood are entirely defined by the surrounding ocean.

## Character check-ins

### Ishmael

Narrator describing the arrival at Nantucket and delivering the extended, philosophical paean to the island and its seafaring people.

### Queequeg

Implied to be present as part of the 'we' who safely arrived in Nantucket after the fine run.

### Captain Peleg

Associated with Nantucket as a principal owner of the Pequod; the ship's arrival is at his home port.

### Captain Bildad

Associated with Nantucket as a principal owner of the Pequod; the ship's arrival is at his home port.

### Aunt Charity

Associated with Nantucket as Bildad's sister; her home and charitable acts are centered there.

### Mrs. Hussey

Associated with Nantucket as the proprietor of the Try Pots inn.

## Key lines

> Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse.

The narrator emphasizes Nantucket's extreme geographical isolation.

_Establishes setting and tone._

> And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their anthill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders...

The people of Nantucket, starting from a tiny, barren island, have come to dominate global whaling.

_Hyperbolic praise for Nantucket's whaling supremacy._

> He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land...

The Nantucket whaleman is so at home on the ocean that the land becomes alien to him.

_Describes the profound maritime identity of the whalemen._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/moby_dick_se/chapters/xiv-nantucket
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/moby_dick_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/moby_dick_se/chapters