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Chapter 112
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
Ahab decides that he wants to ask the blacksmith to forge him a new harpoon, for use in catching the white whale, whom Ahab now calls ‘the white fiend.’ Ahab throws down before the blacksmith a set of old tacks used in the hoofs of “racing horses,” saying that there is no stronger metal to be used in the making of the harpoon.
Ahab now sees Moby Dick as a kind of devil, an interesting fact because other characters have seen both Ahab and Fedallah, whom Ahab has brought expressly to kill Moby Dick, as being devilish too.
Themes
Quiz
Test Yourself
The blacksmith begins the work on the implement, but Ahab interrupts him, saying the harpoon is not perfectly smooth, and asking to do the smoothing himself. Ahab also notes that Perth can smooth out any flaw but one—the “flaw or wrinkle” in Ahab’s own brow and mind, caused by his hunt for the White Whale. Once the harpoon has been completed, Ahab asks the three harpooners if they will be pricked by its barbs to “baptize” it, and they agree. Ahab takes away his new steel weapon, ready to use it in the hunt for Moby Dick.
