Moby-Dick Ch. 80: The Nut

Summary

Ishmael says if the sperm whale's face is a riddle like a Sphinx, then reading bumps on its skull is like trying to square a circle. A full-grown whale skull is at least twenty feet long. In life the top is filled with junk and sperm oil, not empty bone. The real brain is tiny. It sits in a small space under all that oil, at least twenty feet behind the forehead you see from outside. It is hidden deep inside, like a secret room inside a huge fort. Some whalemen even think the whale has no brain except the big oil tank in front.

Ishmael says reading bumps on the living whale's head is a total mistake. You cannot see or feel the true brain at all. Mighty creatures wear a false forehead to the world. If you remove the oil and look at the back of the skull, it looks surprisingly like a human skull. Shrink it down and a bump reader might say the man had no self-respect and no reverence. But add the whale's huge size and power, and that picture gives a truer idea of what real strength looks like.

Ishmael says he would rather feel your spine than your skull. A weak thin spine cannot hold a noble soul. He looks at animals and sees that spine bones look like tiny skulls strung on a necklace. He thinks we should read character along the backbone, not just the skull.

He applies this to the sperm whale. The brain cavity connects to the first neck bone. The spinal canal there is ten inches wide. The spinal cord is huge and stays thick for many feet, almost as big as the brain. So maybe the whale's will lives in its spine, not its tiny brain.

Finally Ishmael points to the whale's hump. It rises over one of the big spine bones. He calls it the organ of firmness or unbeatable will. He warns that you will soon learn the great monster cannot be stopped.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Auditing the Hidden Nut

Facades fool bump readers. Ishmael shows the sperm whale brain is a handful twenty feet behind the false brow, whalemen mistake sperm for mind, and the hump vertebra marks indomitableness.

Before you profile a giant by its decked forehead, map the spine and find the citadel inside the ramparts.

Coming Up in Chapter 81

Next the Pequod meets the German ship Jungfrau. Captain Derick De Deer rows over waving a lamp-feeder and oil can. His clean, empty ship has run out of oil on the whale grounds.

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Original text

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Chapter 80

The Nut

The Nut. If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square. In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life—as we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Find the Real Nut

What is the false brow on your main challenge? Where is the handful of brain?

Consider:

•Magazine?
•Spine?
•Hump?

Journaling Prompt

Write about mistaking treasury or brand for actual decision will.

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Summary