The Time-Break Structure of Moby-Dick

Is it possible, at this late date, that the most obvious structural feature in Moby- Dick remains to be explored? Indeed it is, and, as will appear, not only is that structural feature the most obvious, it is also the most illuminating. So far, Moby- Dick has been divided into three, four, five or six parts. The movement, or cresting, of external, or "dramatic," action provides the main basis for the three- to five-part structures. In The Trying-Out of "Moby-Dick" (1949), Howard P. Vincent works with a simple three-part structure: "The Narrative Beginnings" (Chapters 1 ["Loomings"] to 31 ["Queen Nab"]), "The Cetological Center" (Chapters 32 ["Cetology"] to 105 ["Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?"]), and "The Narrative Conclusion" (Chapter 106 ["Ahab's Leg"] to the "Epi- logue"). Eight years later, Newton Arvin distinguishes four wave movements: Chapters 1 to 22 ("Merry Christmas"), 23 ("The Lee Shore") to 36 ("The Quarter-deck"), 37 ("Sunset") to 131 ("The Pequod Meets the Delight"), and 132 ("The Symphony") to the "Epilogue"—the long third wave containing six minor crests (Arvin 156-158). Most popular, however is the division into five parts, or perhaps five acts, since the cue for this tack (as ultimately for the three- part Aristotelian beginning, middle and end structure) is provided by the percep- tion of Ahab as a tragic hero, the evidence of Shakespeare's influence, and the dramatic mode of presentation in at least thirteen of the book's chapters.1 Thus, two years before Vincent's book, Charles Olson proposed the following five-act breakdown: chapters 1 to 22, 24 ("The Advocate") to 71 ("The Jeroboam's Story"), 72 ("The Monkey-Rope") to 100 ("Leg and Arm"), 101 ("The Decanter") to 119 ("The Candles"), and 120 ("The Deck") to the "Epilogue." Chapter 23 and chapters 41 and 42 ("Moby Dick" and "The Whiteness of the Whale") are viewed as interludes (66-67). Subsequently, James Miller and Bainard Cowan have agreed on the number five but differed (with Olson and between themselves) as to where at least four of the breaks occur.2

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