In Chapter 36 of Moby Dick, the slow start ends abruptly when Ahab finally makes up his mind to go ahead and let everyone know how awesomely crazy he really is. He calls the crew together on the deck to hear one of the greatest insane rants in literature. Ahab begins by nailing a Spanish gold coin to the mast, the reward for whichever crewman spots the White Whale. Starbuck, the big dope, asks if that's the same whale that took off Ahab's leg.
"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out."
And that's just the beginning! Ahab goes on about how everything we see is but a pasteboard mask, but he intends to strike through the mask. It's like he's trying to start a prison riot in Plato's cave.
To win over the crew he passes around the grog-cup, but for the harpooneers there's a special toast, drunk from the steel sockets of their deadly harpoon-heads. "Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!"
Apparently the entire crew, including Ishmael the narrator, thinks this is an absolutely swell idea. Only Starbuck is still skeptical, but he's so overawed by the force of Ahab's personality that he can only mutter objections.
Is there a scrap of realism in this? Of course not. Any real-life whaling captain who started ranting at his crew like that would have been strapped into his hammock and dropped at the nearest port. But it doesn't matter. We're hooked, by this point. This is the payoff for the slow beginning of the story: by establishing the reality of the Pequod and her crew, Melville gets us to accept Ahab's insanity. In a way, I think the boredom of the start may even be deliberate. If you've plowed through the book this far, you get your prize, a crazy obsessed captain who can take the story absolutely anywhere after this.
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