Chapter 15: Chowder

 

Summary

Beginning the chapter, Ishmael and Queequegs' ship docks at Nantucket, and they go ashore. They make their way to a tavern recommended them by Mr Coffin, the Try Pots. There the innkeeper, Mrs Hussey, fixes them a meal of chowders, both clam and cod. After their meal she shows them to a room, but demands before they enter that Queequeg relinquish his harpoon for the night. This is highly unorthodox, as one seldom sees a harpooner without their harpoon, but Queequeg relents nonetheless. Ishmael asks why the innkeeper has this stipulation for sleeping in her inn, and she replies that a previous boarder, Stiggs, came back from a voyage some years ago, and he died by his own harpoon in his room. 

Quotes

"It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel; and here a gallows!"

This shows that Ishmael is seeing the foreshadowing, and he is not entirely blind to the way the plot of his own story is unfolding. It also reinforces the ominous feel of the book so far.

"It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt."

This sentence is one that rather defines the book itself. It is wonderfully written, going into detail about the smallest thing. This descriptive writing almost allows the reader to see what Ishmael is seeing, smell what he is smelling.

"There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye."

Same as the last sentence, I chose this one because I simply love the way that Melville writes, throwing in quirks and twists in every part of his story, keeping it interesting no matter what the subject material is.

*What must it be like, to live the life of an innkeeper? To see the trickle, the constant flow of people, the constant flood of information passing in and subsequently out of your very own doors? How exciting, yet somehow at the same time dull, must their daily routines be?

Vocab

Brindled: Streaked with grey or brown, or patched with any sort of dark color.

Oblique: Not parallel or perpendicular to an implied line.

Repast: A meal, occurring at any time of the day

Slip-Shod: Very unstable, liable to fall at any moment