Study Questions
1. Describe Elijah and explain the significance of his name.

2. What nickname does he have for Ahab?

3. What vague references does he make to events in Ahab’s past?

4. What effect did Elijah have on Ishmael?

5. Why is Aunt Charity aptly named?

6. Is Ishmael able to find the shadowy figures he saw board the boat?

7. In Queequeg’s land, with what do the wealthier people “furnish” their houses?

8. What is the Pequod’s day of departure?

9. What are the sailors singing about while Bildad sings his “dismal stave of psalmody?”

10. Who piloted the ship out of the harbor?

Answers
1. Elijah is a ragged, pockmarked old sailor, named after a biblical prophet and enemy of King Ahab.

2. Old Thunder is his nickname for Ahab.

3. He refers to a three-day period when Ahab “lay like dead” and to a deadly scrimmage with a Spaniard.

4. Ishmael felt apprehensive.

5. She worked tirelessly to provide comfort for those going on the voyage.

6. No, and he tried to keep the thought out of his mind.

7. They furnish their houses with fattened, lower class folk to use as settees.

8. Christmas is the Pequod’s day of departure.

9. The sailors sing about “the girls in Booble alley.”

10. Peleg and Bildad are the pilots.