Depiction: After the wreck and disappearance of the Pequod, a bereft Ishmael floats in the sea, clinging to Queequeg's coffin. Three cups float on the waves, two are balanced on the coffin.. In the distance, behind Ishmael, we see the approaching Rachel.
Text: Epilogue
Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main.
| Stephen Costello as Greenhorn (Ishmael) in the SF Opera's production of Moby Dick |
Comments: The epilogue is remarkably terse and abrupt compared to all the prose that has gone before it. Perhaps Ishmael (or Melville) was too exhausted for his usual lengthy speculation. I liked the closure provided at the end of Jake Heggie's opera Moby-Dick, in which Captain Gardiner asks Ishmael, "Is Ahab dead?" and Ishmael replies, "Ahab is dead. And Starbuck. And Stubb. And Flask....and Queequeg." I am not sure if the pause at the end is a correct memory, but it is sung with such intense feeling.
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| A version of the Epilogue from American Renaissance Tarot, with shards of the wrecked Pequod serving as pips. |
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