How Moby-Dick or, The Whale drew on Jonah
A documented line of influence: Herman Melville demonstrably engaged Jonah’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Jonah
Jonah · c. 400 BCE
BibleThe influenced
Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Herman Melville · 1851
The Age of the NovelRelevance
9/10
On Moby-Dick or, The Whale’s page
- Before the Pequod sails, Melville stops everything for Jonah: Father Mapple's sermon (Ch. 9) is a full adaptation of the prophet swallowed by the whale
- Jonah's lesson — obey, or be hurled into the deep — sets the bar that Ahab will spend the novel defying
- Read the short prophet first and Mapple's sermon stops being a digression and becomes the key to the book's argument about God and submission
On Jonah’s page
- Father Mapple's sermon in Chapter 9 of Moby-Dick is, start to finish, a sermon on Jonah — a sustained KJV retelling Melville plants at the threshold of the novel
- Jonah's theme — disobedience, flight, and reluctant submission to God — becomes the moral frame the whole voyage is measured against
- It's the original man-and-whale story, and Melville knew his readers would feel the echo every time the Pequod hunts