Moby-Dick

Chapters 1-3Overview and Discussion

Where are we?

New Bedford, MA - Today

New Bedford Whaling Museum

• http://www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/students

What Ishmael may have seen…

Reading #1 Overview

• Chapter 1 – Loomings

• * Ishmael introduces himself to the reader• * Meditation and Water wedded forever• * Going to see as a simple sailor• * “overwhelming idea of the great whale

himself…”

Ishmael in New Bedford

• Chapter 2- The Carpet Bag• * Romanticism/ Nostalgia “For my mind was made up…” (7)• Mood / Foreshadowing “ It was a very dubious looking…night” (7).• Ishmael’s wandering through the streets of new

Bedford (8)• Ishamael’s “voice”- final line of the chapter

Ishmael, meet Queequeg!

• Chapter 3- The Spouter Inn * “At last I slid off into a slight doze and had

pretty nearly made a good offing to the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door” (20).

* “I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him” (21).