Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!

Ishmael's voyage frames Ahab's monomaniacal quest; the doubloon oath seeds the three-day chase climax while cetological digressions suspend plot by design, so plot scores 86.

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.

Ahab alone is among American literature's greatest creations; the ship's company (Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubb, Fedallah) orbit his Shakespearean gravity as cosmology, so cast scores 90.

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship.

The middle two-thirds often abandon narrative for whaling lore and philosophical meditations; the try-works chapter typifies the infamous digressions that slow tempo before the three-day chase restores ferocity, so pace scores 78.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Shakespearean soliloquy, biblical cadence, and Homeric catalog fuse in a single voice; "Call me Ishmael" opened American literature to metaphysical adventure, so prose scores 98.

It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were first started on this present voyage. The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck.

Nantucket whaling culture, the Pequod as microcosm, and the Pacific as sublime void form a complete cosmology built from whale-hunting economics and metaphysics—the ship is the world, so world scores 92.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet.

"Call me Ishmael" plus the paragraph that follows is the greatest mood-establishment in English—three words that opened American literature to metaphysical adventure, so hook scores 96.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw."

Modernist before modernism: encyclopedic form, unreliable narration, typographical experimentation, and genre fusion (adventure + philosophy + natural history + drama) descend from this voyage, so innov scores 98.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

The Pequod dragged under, all hands lost except Ishmael on Queequeg's coffin—the Job epigraph frames destruction as biblical witness, so ending scores 94.