This is Moby Dick Chapter 23: The Lee Shore (summary).
Vocabulary Words found in this chapter: Moby Dick Chapter 23: The Lee Shore (Vocabulary Words)
Previous chapter: Moby Dick Chapter 22 (summary)
On the snowy winter’s night, Ishmael sees Bulkington, a tall and new mariner whom they’ve met back at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford1where a noisy group of mariners, filled with icicles all over their beards and coats, came in the inn looking for Bulkington..
But right now, Ishmael looked at him with such sympathetic awe as he (Bulkington) stood at the helm. Why? Because unfortunately, this chapter is Bulkington’s “stoneless grave”, as Ishmael puts it.
Shortly, he revealed that this brave man will sink with the ship. How? Well, as the title of this chapter already hinted, their ship will one day be on the lee shore, where a storm, sadly, took Bulkington’s life.
Furthermore, Ishmael foretold that this will undoubtedly happen, since he wrote this chapter when Bulkington was already dead. But, he concluded that every man, including Bulkington, is bound to adventures even if it means his death.
End of Moby Dick Chapter 23: The Lee Shore (summary).
Notes:
In the later chapters though, you may not hear about Bulkington ever again. Why is that? Some critics say that he was to have a larger part in the narrative, but Melville simply forgot about him.
On the other hand, others claim that Bulkington is a symbol of the many crew members of the Pequod whose stories were not told in the novel. Moreover, these men were simply subsumed2to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive : encompass as a subordinate or component element. into the hunt for Moby Dick.
In any event, Bulkington remained a mystery in the novel. In short, he was never fully explained or characterized in this novel.