Nantucket
From Chapter 14 of Moby Dick [1851]
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
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. Look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--the poor little Indian's skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quahogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea, Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. 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; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
Questions for Discussion
1. The controlling analogy of the passage is
A) Nantucket : Illinois
B) sea : land
C) Noah : Nantucket
D) moon : Earthsman
E) legends : reality
2. Melville describes Nantucketers as all of the following except:
A) conquerors
B) natives of the sea
C) farmers of the sea
D) strangers to the land
E) exploiters of the Native American claims
3. The tone of the passage can best be described as
A) self-congratulatory and confident
B) formal and pompous
C) admiring and hyperbolic
D) informal and cynical
E) pedantic and objective
4. The most probable reason for repeating and italicizing “There” in the middle of paragraph 4 at the beginning of two main clauses in the same sentence is to
A) force the reader to look for an antecedent
B) sound poetic
C) provide a break in a long, complicated sentence
D) emphasize the sense of place
E) indicate sympathy for the plight of the Nantucketer
5. The shift in the focus of the piece occurs in which line?
A) The first sentence of paragraph 2
B) The first sentence of paragraph 3
C) The first sentence of paragraph 4
D) The third sentence in paragraph 4
E) The last sentence
6. The first paragraph contains an extended example of
A) parallel structure
B) anecdote
C) periodic sentence
D) generalization
E) argument
7. Melville retells the Native American legend of how the island was settled in order to
A) have his audience identify with the Native American population
B) make the passage seem like a parable
C) contrast with the reality of the Nantucketers
D) bring a mythic quality to the subject
E) highlight the plight of the Nantucketers
8. The development of paragraph 3 is structured around
A) spatial description
B) selection of incremental details
C) central analogy
D) parallel structure
E paradox
9. Based on a careful reading of the passage, complete the following analogy: NANTUCKET : ILLINOIS ::
A) merchant ships : pirate ships
B) Native American : eagle
C) ivory casket : skeleton
D) backs of sea turtles : chairs and tables
E) walrus : prairie dog
10. One may conclude from the information contained in paragraph 3 that “himmalehan salt-sea mastedon” refers to
A) the ocean
B) the whale
C) the power of nature
D) Biblical vengeance
E) emperors
11. The purpose of the passage is most probably to
A) encourage people to settle on Nantucket
B) use Nantucket as a model of ecological conservation
C) honor the indomitable spirit of the Nantucketers
D) plead for the return of Nantucket to the Native Americans
E) present a nostalgic reminiscence of the writer’s birthplace
12. Melville uses thus twice in this passage: once in the second sentence of paragraph 2 to begin the Native American legend about the island being settled. What is the reason for using thus a second time in the first sentence of paragraph 4?
I. to begin a comparative legend with the Nantucketers settling the sea
II. to balance the first part of the pas- sage with the second part
III. to reinforce the formality of his presentation
A) I
B) II
C) III
D) I and II
E) I, II, and III
13. The subtle humor of the first paragraph is dependent upon
A) paradox
B) hyperbole
C) juxtaposition
D) irony
E) ad hominem argument
14. The last sentence of the passage continues the analogy between
A) reality : illusion
B) night : day
C) man : animal
D) gull : walrus
E) sea : land