Moby-Dick Ch. 65: The Whale as a Dish

Summary

Ishmael says it seems strange that people eat the whale whose oil lights their lamps. Stubb did exactly that. He ate whale steak by the light of whale oil. Ishmael wants to look at the history and ideas behind this.

Long ago, right whale tongue was a prized food in France. In Henry VIII's time, a cook won a reward for sauce to eat with barbecued porpoise. Porpoise is a kind of whale. Monks in Scotland even had royal grants to eat porpoise meat made into spiced balls.

Whale hunters would call whale a fine dish if there were not so much of it. A pie one hundred feet long ruins your appetite. Only men like Stubb eat cooked whale today. Inuit people are less picky. They live on whale meat and blubber.

Whale is also too rich and oily. The hump is mostly fat. Sailors on night watch sometimes dip hard biscuits into boiling whale oil for supper. Small sperm whale brains, cooked with flour, taste like calves' head, a dish for fancy eaters.

Many landsmen feel disgust at eating a fresh-killed sea animal by its own light. Ishmael asks who is really innocent. At the Saturday meat market, live people stare at rows of dead animals. Who is not a cannibal in some way?

He says a civilized gourmet who force-feeds geese for liver pate may be worse at judgment than a Pacific islander who preserved food in hard times.

Then Ishmael turns the joke back on the reader. Your knife handle may be bone from the brother of the ox you are eating. Your toothpick may be a feather from the goose on your plate. Even a society against cruelty to geese only recently stopped using quill pens. We all use what we kill, even when we pretend we do not.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Tracing the Consumption Loop

Visible cycles offend you; hidden ones feed you. Ishmael says eating whale by the light of its oil seems outlandish, then shows Saturday meat markets and bone knife handles of the ox you eat.

Before you call a practice barbaric, follow the lamp, the margin, and the tool in your hand to the same body.

Coming Up in Chapter 66

Next: The Shark Massacre. Pacific Line crews cannot wait till daylight; Queequeg and anchor-watch drive spades into sharks round the moored carcase through the night.

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Original text

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Chapter 65

The Whale as a Dish

The Whale as a Dish. That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it. It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Trace Your Lamp

Name one thing your job sells or ships that you also consume or celebrate. Draw the loop in three steps.

Consider:

•What is the oil?
•What is the steak?
•What is the handle?

Journaling Prompt

Write about a time visible complicity bothered you more than a hidden equivalent.

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Summary