The Chapel — Moby-Dick

On a cold, sleety Sunday Ishmael goes to the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford. Inside, a small group of sailors, wives, and widows sits in heavy silence, each person alone with their grief. The preacher has not arrived yet. Everyone stares at black-bordered marble plaques on the walls listing men killed at sea: a teenager lost overboard, six men dragged away by a whale, and a captain struck in his boat off Japan.

Near the door Ishmael sees Queequeg. Queequeg is the only one who notices him, because he cannot read the wall plaques and is studying the room instead. Ishmael thinks many women there may be wives or mothers of the dead, mourning men with no graves, only stone names where no body lies.

Burial on land is different. You can stand on grass and know where your loved one rests. Death at sea leaves empty memorials and shakes faith in a special way. Ishmael works through hard questions about the dead, then admits he is about to sail himself and might end up on those same walls: yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be yours.

Then, strangely, he cheers up. Whaling can kill you fast, but he decides his body is not the whole person. Let them take the body if they must; his soul is something else. He ends with three cheers for Nantucket anyway.