Moby Dick Allusions

Chapter 1

Ishmael

1) Biblical--son of Abraham; an exile.

2) Ishmael ben Elisha--2nd century A.D. Jewish teacher of Galilee; outstanding Talmudic teacher;

compiled the 13 hermeneutical rules for interpreting the Torah; founded a school which produced the legal commentary, Mekhilta.

Cato

A Shakespearean character in Julius Caesar; committed suicide by falling on his sword.

Seneca and the Stoics

Seneca--among Rome's leading intellectual figures in the mid-1st century AD. He and Epictetus were leading voices of Stoicism.

Stoics--1) Greek school of philosophy holding that human beings should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will.

Narcissus

Greek mythology--young man who fell in love with his own image in a pool of water and either wasted away or fell into the pool and drowned.

Fates

1) Greek mythology--the three goddesses who govern human destiny. While one sister dictates the events of an individual's life, another sister weaves them into a tapestry on the Loom of Life, and the third sister stands

ready with a pair of shears to cut the thread, thus ending the life.

2) Predestination.

Tyre of Carthage

A principal port founded by the Phoenicians, among the greatest seafarers of the ancient world.

Euroclydon

Biblical (Acts 27:14)--the tempestuous east wind that shipwrecked Paul off the coast of Malta.

Moluccas

Spice Islands between Celebes and New Guinea.

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Chapter 2

Black Parliament sitting in Tophet

1) Biblical (Jer. 7:31)--Tophet was a shrine in the valley of Hinnom south of ancient Jerusalem where human sacrifices, especially those of children, were performed to Moloch.

2) Hell.

Lazarus

Biblical (Luke 16: 19-31)--the diseased beggar in the parable of the rich man and the beggar.

Sumatra

The second largest island of Indonesia lying in the Indian Ocean west of Malaysia and Borneo by Sunda Strait.

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Chapter 3

Hyperborean

1) Greek--Hyperboa was one known to the ancient Greeks from the earliest times. He lived in an unidentified country in the far north and was renowned as a pious and divinely favored adherent of the cult of Apollo.

2) very cold; frigid; north wind.

Jonah

Biblical (Book of Jonah)--an intolerant, unwilling servant of God. He was called by God to go to Nineveh and prophesy disaster because of the city's wickedness. He did not want to go and took passage in a ship at Joppa going in the opposite direction, thus escaping God's command. At sea, Jonah admits to the crew that it is his fault that a storm is about to destroy the ship. They throw him overboard. Jonah is swallowed by a great fish and stays inside it for three days and three nights. He prays for deliverance. He is vomited onto land and goes to Ninevah, as God had commanded. See artwork.

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Chapter 4

Cretan labyrinth

Greek--the building containing a maze which Daedalus constructed for King Minos of Crete as a place in which to confine the Minotaur. Those put in the maze could not find their way out and were destroyed by the Minotaur. Theseus was the only one to escape.

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Chapter 6

Canaan

Biblical--Canaan was the land promised to Moses and his people by God after they fled from Egypt. It was an opulent land of milk and honey.

Herr Alexander

Alexander the great, the military mastermind who conquered the majority of the known world during the years 336-330 B.C. Because of his tactical genius, he was able to accomplish his conquest without superiority of numbers.

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Chapter 7

Pequod

The Pequod--also spelled Pequot and Pequoit--was an American Indian tribe which, as Melville briefly mentions, was destroyed by the Puritans. Read Captain John Mason's account of the Puritan attack of the Pequot fort.

cave of Elephanta

Elephanta is an isle off the western coast of India in Bombay Harbor famous for its 8th century temple caves carved out of rock, its walls sculpted with figures of Hindu deities.

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Chapter 8

Victory's plank where Nelson fell

Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) was a British naval officer and national hero. His ship, Victory, was involved in a battle with the French. Someone on the French ship, Redoutalde, shot Nelson and broke his spine. Nelson died as the British won by annihilating the French.

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Chapter 16

Medes

Inhabitants of ancient Media, a country northwest of Persia and south of Caspian Sea; an independent country and an

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