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60 free Moby-Dick trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Moby-Dick trivia quiz sails the whole voyage: the bed shared at a New Bedford inn, Father Mapple's sermon, the Quaker owners, the doubloon nailed to the mast, Fedallah's prophecy, Pip left alone in the ocean, the coffin that becomes a life buoy and the three-day chase that sinks the ship. There are questions on the crew, from Starbuck and Stubb to Tashtego and Daggoo, and on why a Seattle coffee company ended up borrowing a first mate's name. The second half is about how the book was made and nearly lost: the whaler Melville sailed on, the wreck of the Essex, the albino whale off Chile, the picnic where he met Hawthorne, the London edition that dropped the epilogue, the tiny print runs, the $1,260 he earned, and the 1919 centenary that finally made it a classic. Gregory Peck, Ray Bradbury, Orson Welles and an Irish fishing town cover the 1956 film. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the novel, its author, its characters, the Essex and the film, and each explanation adds one detail worth carrying away. It suits book clubs, American literature classes and anyone who has ever started the book and stalled at the cetology chapters.
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Q 01What are the famous first three words of the novel?
Call me Ishmael
The narrator never confirms it is his real name; scholars split him into the young 'forecastle Ishmael' who sails and the older one who tells the tale.
Q 02In which year was Moby-Dick first published?
1851
It appeared in London in October as The Whale and in New York in November under its final title, after eighteen months of writing.
Q 03What is the name of Captain Ahab's whaling ship?
Pequod
The narrator says the ship is named for a Native American tribe scattered in the 1600s, and one scholar reads the ship's destruction as an echo of that tribe's fate.
Q 04Ahab's ship is named after which people?
The Pequot tribe
The Mashantucket and Eastern Pequot still live on reservations in Connecticut; the name also echoes 'Pekod', a biblical word for punishment.
Q 05Moby Dick is which species of cetacean?
Sperm whale
The novel devotes whole chapters to the animal's anatomy, from the spermaceti in its head to its skeleton.
Q 06What did the white whale take from Ahab on a previous voyage?
His leg
The captain of the Samuel Enderby lost an arm to the same whale and bears no grudge.
Q 07Ahab's prosthetic limb is made from what?
A whale's jawbone
He also carries a livid rod-like scar running from his grey hair down his face and neck.
Q 08What does Ahab nail to the mast as a reward for the first man to sight the white whale?
A gold doubloon
In a chapter devoted to the coin each crewman reads its symbols differently, and Ahab ends up claiming it for himself when he spots the whale first.
Q 09Which tattooed harpooneer shares a bed with the narrator at a crowded inn before the voyage?
Queequeg
He is a king's son from the fictional South Pacific island of Rokovoko and prays to a small idol named Yojo.
Q 10What object, built for the tattooed harpooneer when he falls ill, ends up saving the narrator's life?
A coffin
He recovers and uses it as a sea chest; after the ship sinks it bobs up out of the whirlpool and the narrator clings to it.
Q 11Which ship rescues the narrator, the sole survivor, at the end?
The Rachel
Her captain had earlier begged Ahab to help search for a lost whaleboat carrying his son, and Ahab refused.
Q 12Who is the chief mate of Ahab's ship, a realist Quaker who objects that the voyage is meant for profit?
Starbuck
The founders of a Seattle coffee company borrowed his name in 1971 after rejecting 'Starbo', a misread mining-town name.
Q 13How many other ships does Ahab's vessel meet in 'gams' during the voyage?
Nine
Each meeting plots the rising curve of Ahab's obsession; the ships that have already met the white whale are progressively more damaged.
Q 21Which young cabin boy is left alone in the ocean and loses his mind?
Pip
Ahab, genuinely moved, later takes him under his wing; critics call him 'the ship's conscience'.
Q 22Over how many days does the final chase of the white whale take place?
Three
The whale bites Ahab's boat in two on the first day, smashes all three boats on the second and sinks the ship on the third.
Q 23By which route does the ship cross into the Indian Ocean?
Round the Cape of Good Hope
It heads for the Azores first, then down past South America; a typhoon near Japan later sets the stage for the final confrontation.
Q 14Which cheerful second mate hails from Cape Cod?
Stubb
He kills the ship's first whale, and the cook Fleece then preaches a sermon to the sharks eating the carcass.
Q 15Which port does the narrator travel to first, before the ship sails from Nantucket?
New Bedford
The Whaleman's Chapel there is modelled on the Seamen's Bethel, where Melville heard a sermon shortly before he shipped out himself.
Q 16Father Mapple's sermon at the seamen's chapel is about which biblical figure?
Jonah
The real preacher who inspired him, Enoch Mudge, actually contributed sermons on Jonah to Sailor's Magazine.
Q 17Which two Quaker owners sign the narrator aboard the ship?
Bildad and Peleg
Peleg calls Ahab a 'grand, ungodly, god-like man'; the real owner of Melville's whaler was also a Quaker who crossed out 'swear' on documents and wrote 'affirm'.
Q 18On what day does the ship set sail?
Christmas Day
Shadowy figures slip aboard first: Ahab's secret boat crew, whose Parsee leader will prophesy his death.
Q 19Who is the Parsee leader of Ahab's secret harpoon crew, who prophesies the captain's death?
Fedallah
He foretells two hearses, one not made by mortal hands, and that only hemp can kill Ahab; every part comes true.
Q 20According to the prophecy, what is the only thing that can kill Ahab?
Hemp
The line of his own harpoon loops around his neck and drags him down, fulfilling it exactly.
Q 24The novel is dedicated to which fellow writer, whom Melville met at a picnic in 1850?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Melville had just reviewed his Mosses from an Old Manse; the friendship may have pushed him to deepen a straightforward whaling yarn into an epic.
Q 25Under what title was the book first published in London, a month before the American edition?
The Whale
Melville changed the title at the last minute for New York; the whale's name appears without a hyphen in the text of both editions.
Q 26What was missing from the British edition, leaving reviewers thinking the narrator had drowned?
The epilogue
Nothing in it was objectionable; the pages were most likely lost by the printer, and British critics were baffled by a dead man telling the story.
Q 27Which London publisher issued the first, three-volume edition and censored some passages?
Richard Bentley
He printed only 500 copies, sold fewer than 300 in four months and never printed another edition.
Q 28How many copies did the first American printing run to?
2,915
About 1,500 sold in eleven days, then sales died; the book was out of print when Melville died in 1891.
Q 29Roughly how much did Melville earn from the book in his lifetime?
$1,260
That was $100 less than any of his five previous books had made him; his widow got another $81 in the 1890s.
Q 30The novel's ending is based on the real 1820 sinking of which Nantucket whaleship?
The Essex
First mate Owen Chase's account of the wreck reached Melville through Chase's own son during a mid-ocean gam.