Previous
Chapter 94
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Moby-Dick, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Limits of Knowledge
Fate and Free Will
Nature and Man
Race, Fellowship, and Enslavement
Madness
Religion
Summary
Analysis
Ishmael describes the skin of the whale’s penis, or “grandissimus,” which is used by the mincer (one who grounds down bits of whale blubber) as a kind of cassock, or priest’s robe. The mincer pulls the skin off the whale penis and cuts holes in it, wearing it to go about his mincing, and Ishmael believes that the man looks like a kind of jovial, comical Pope, wearing his holy robe taken from a most unholy part of the whale.
An example of bawdy, slapstick humor in the novel. Readers at the time might have been especially offended by the idea that characters in the novel were expressly mocking Christian traditions—although these particular traditions are associated with the Catholic church, and many of the sailors on the vessel appear to be New England protestants.
Themes
Quiz
Test Yourself
