Chapter 23 of Moby Dick - The Lee Shore

Introduction - Ishmael's Narration

Moby Dick's narrator Ishmael alternates between different styles of narration. Broadly speaking, Ishmael's styles of narration can be grouped into the following three categories:

1. Storyteller - this is a standard narrator voice. In this voice, Ishmael describes events that happened.
2. Philosopher - throughout Moby Dick, Ishmael will describe some event or characteristic of a whaling voyage and seize upon that characteristic as a metaphor for life and use it to go off on a tangent about metaphysics or his reflections on life and the human condition.
3. Metafictional - this is the most unique style of Ishmael’s narration and, in my opinion, is central to what makes Moby Dick so arresting. Writing in this voice, Ishmael’s character breaks the fourth wall and he addresses himself directly to the reader or to characters of his story like a living-god of his universe or its epic-poet, with the power to speak in real-time from some transcendent-narrator-realm. (The book's opening sentence evokes this metafictional style by addressing the reader directly: "Call me Ishmael." From these opening words, Ishmael makes clear that he is no ordinary narrator. Instead, he like is a tangible-presence who is comfortable speaking directly to us and to his characters with startling directness.)

Chapter 23 - The Lee Shore

This short chapter, only 13 sentences in length, manages to capture the range of narrative voices at play in Moby Dick and the book's unique energy and variety.The word "lee" means sheltered.

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

We first read about Bulkington in chapter 3 of this book, wherein Ishmael observed Bulkington arriving in the town of New Bedford after a long whaling voyage. Now, in chapter 23, Ishmael is about to embark on his own whaling voyage and he observes that Bulkington is embarking with him. 

When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington!

So far, all of this has been an example of Ishmael's storyteller voice.

I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.

Now Ishmael’s storytelling breaks off and he transitions into his philosopher voice.

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.

Ishmael is telling us that this short, "six inch chapter" is the last we will read of Bulkington.

Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.

Translation: Bulkington’s eventual fate is like that of a ship that crashes into land. Now Ishmael transitions back to his philosopher-voice again and uses an image of a ship as a metaphor for Bulkington's alarming bravery.

The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

In what follows, we encounter Ishmael's metafictional voice. Here Ishmael's character seems to transcend the confines of his own story as he addresses Bulkington directly.

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

More philosophy.

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?

The chapter ends with a kind of invocation. Here Ishmael addresses Bulkington like an epic-poet might imagine God addressing one of his mortal creations.

Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!

And we never hear of Bulkington again in this book.