Moby Dick (1956 Film)
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Moby Dick (1956 Film)
''Moby Dick'' is a 1956 color film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel ''Moby-Dick''. It was directed by John Huston with a screenplay by Huston and Ray Bradbury. The film starred Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, and Leo Genn. The music score was written by Philip Sainton. Plot In 1841, a sailor named Ishmael wanders to the New England town of New Bedford, Massachusetts to sign on a whaling ship. In the inn where he is staying for the night, he is forced to share his room with a Pacific Islander and harponeer named Queequeg, whom he befriends after a tense first meeting. The next morning, the two of them hire onto a whaling ship named '' Pequod'', which is commanded by grim Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with hunting and killing a legendary white-skinned whale named Moby Dick, who was responsible for severing Ahab's left leg. Just before their departure, Ishmael and Queequeg encounter a man named Elijah, who delivers an ominous warning about Ahab and that all but one ...
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John Huston
John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics, including '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941), '' The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' (1948), ''The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950), '' The African Queen'' (1951), '' The Misfits'' (1961), '' Fat City'' (1972), ''The Man Who Would Be King'' (1975) and ''Prizzi's Honor'' (1985). During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Academy Award nominations, winning twice. He also directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins. In his early years, Huston studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by ...
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Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut [Massachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət],'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to the east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York (state), New York to the west. The state's capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also home to the urban area, urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England and a region profoundly influential upon American History of the United States, history, academia, and the Economy of the United States, research economy. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade. Massachusetts was transformed into a manuf ...
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Slack Water
Slack water is a short period in a body of tidal water when the water is completely unstressed, and there is no movement either way in the tidal stream, and which occurs before the direction of the tidal stream reverses. Slack water can be estimated using a tidal atlas or the tidal diamond information on a nautical chart. The time of slack water, particularly in constricted waters, does not occur at high and low water, and in certain areas, such as Primera Angostura, the ebb may run for up to three hours after the water level has started to rise. Similarly, the flood may run for up to three hours after the water has started to fall. In 1884, Thornton Lecky illustrated the phenomenon with an inland basin of infinite size, connected to the sea by a narrow mouth. Since the level of the basin is always at mean sea level, the flood in the mouth starts at half tide, and its velocity is at its greatest at the time of high water, with the strongest ebb occurring conversely at low water ...
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Mutiny
Mutiny is a revolt among a group of people (typically of a military, of a crew or of a crew of pirates) to oppose, change, or overthrow an organization to which they were previously loyal. The term is commonly used for a rebellion among members of the military against an internal force, but it can also sometimes mean any type of rebellion against any force. Mutiny does not necessarily need to refer to a military force and can describe a political, economic, or power structure in which there is a change of power. During the Age of Discovery, mutiny particularly meant open rebellion against a ship's captain. This occurred, for example, during Ferdinand Magellan's journeys around the world, resulting in the killing of one mutineer, the execution of another, and the marooning of others; on Henry Hudson's ''Discovery'', resulting in Hudson and others being set adrift in a boat; and the notorious mutiny on the ''Bounty''. Penalty Those convicted of mutiny often faced capital punis ...
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Chief Mate
A chief mate (C/M) or chief officer, usually also synonymous with the first mate or first officer, is a licensed mariner and head of the deck department of a merchant ship. The chief mate is customarily a watchstander and is in charge of the ship's cargo and deck crew. The actual title used will vary by ship's employment, by type of ship, by nationality, and by trade: for instance, ''chief mate'' is not usually used in the Commonwealth, although ''chief officer'' and ''first mate'' are; on passenger ships, the first officer may be a separate position from that of the chief officer that is junior to the latter. The chief mate answers to the captain for the safety and security of the ship. Responsibilities include the crew's welfare and training in areas such as safety, firefighting, search and rescue. Senior on board Operations Manager The Chief Mate, who is the second in command of the vessel, is often equated, in corporate terms, to a senior manager for the operations on bo ...
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Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa across the Mozambique Channel. At Madagascar is the world's List of island countries, second-largest island country, after Indonesia. The nation is home to around 30 million inhabitants and consists of the island of Geography of Madagascar, Madagascar (the List of islands by area, fourth-largest island in the world), along with numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent around 90 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; over 90% of wildlife of Madagascar, its wildlife is endemic. Human settlement of Madagascar occurred during or befo ...
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Whale Oil
Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Whale oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' ("tears, tear" or "drop"). Sperm oil, a special kind of oil obtained from the head cavities of sperm whales, differs chemically from ordinary whale oil: it is composed mostly of liquid wax. Its properties and applications differ from those of regular whale oil, and it was sold for a higher price. Source and use Emerging industrial societies used whale oil in oil lamps and to Soap#History, make soap. In the 20th century it was made into margarine. With the commercial development of the petroleum industry and vegetable oils, the use of whale oils declined considerably from its peak in the 19th century into the 20th century. This is said to have saved whales from extinction. In the 21st century, with most countries having banned whaling, the sale and use of whale oil has practically ceased. Whale oil was obtained by ...
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Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll ( or ; Marshallese: , , meaning "coconut place"), sometimes known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 1800s and 1946 is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a central lagoon. After the Second World War, the atoll's inhabitants were forcibly relocated in 1946, after which the islands and lagoon were the site of 23 nuclear tests by the United States until 1958. The atoll is at the northern end of the Ralik Chain, approximately northwest of the capital Majuro. Three families were resettled on Bikini island in 1970, totaling about 100 residents, but scientists found dangerously high levels of strontium-90 in well water in May 1977, and the residents were carrying abnormally high concentrations of caesium-137 in their bodies. They were evacuated again in 1980. The atoll is occasionally visited today by divers and a few scientists, and is occupied by a handful of caretakers. Etymology The island's English name is derived from t ...
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List Of Moby-Dick Characters
''Moby-Dick'' (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville. While some characters only appear in the shore-based chapters at the beginning of the book, and others are captains and crewmembers of other ships, the majority of the characters are officers or crewmembers of the whaling ship, ''Pequod (Moby-Dick), Pequod''. Ishmael Ishmael is the narrator of the book. He recounts the whaling voyage led by Captain Ahab while also explaining the history and mechanics of whaling and attempting to promote the nobility of the trade. He primarily observes the major events of the novel as opposed to being an active participant in them. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Ishmael was the only survivor of the sinking of the ''Pequod''. The name ''Ishmael'' has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts in reference to the biblical character from which his name is taken. Captain Ahab Captain Ahab is the tyrannical captain of the ''Pequod''. Prior to the events of the novel, Captain Aha ...
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Moby Dick (whale)
Moby Dick is a sperm whale who is the main antagonist in Herman Melville's 1851 novel of the same name. Melville based the whale partially on a real albino whale of that period called Mocha Dick. Description Ishmael describes Moby Dick as having two prominent white areas around "a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump", the rest of his body being of stripes and patches between white and gray. The animal's exact dimensions are never given, but the novel claims that the largest sperm whales can reach a length of (larger than any officially recorded sperm whale) and that Moby Dick is possibly the largest sperm whale that ever lived. Ahab tells the crew that the White Whale can be told because he has an unusual spout, a deformed jaw, three punctures in his right fluke and several harpoons embedded in his side from unsuccessful hunts. Yet Ishmael insists that what invested the whale with "natural terror" was that "unexampled, intelligent malignity" ...
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Captain Ahab
Captain Ahab is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists in Herman Melville's ''Moby-Dick'' (1851). He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod''. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, and he now wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. The whaling voyage of the ''Pequod'' ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab forces the crew members to support his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags him to his death beneath the sea and sinks the ''Pequod''. Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco calls Ahab "a brilliant personification of the very essence of fanaticism". Scholar F. O. Matthiessen calls attention to the fact that Ahab is called an "ungodly god-like man". Ahab's "tragedy is that of an unregenerate will" whose "burning mind is barred out from the exuberance of love" and argues that he "remains damned". Writer D. H. Lawrence felt lit ...
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Pequod (Moby-Dick)
''Pequod'' is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel ''Moby-Dick'' by American author Herman Melville. ''Pequod'' and her crew, commanded by Captain Ahab, are central to the story, which, after the initial chapters, takes place almost entirely aboard the ship during a three-year whaling expedition in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific oceans. Most of the characters in the novel are part of ''Pequod''s crew. Ishmael, the novel's narrator, encounters the ship after he arrives in Nantucket and learns of three ships that are about to leave on three-year cruises. Tasked by his new friend, the Polynesian harpooner Queequeg (or more precisely, Queequeg's idol-god, Yojo), to make the selection for them both, Ishmael, a self-described "green hand at whaling," goes to the Straight Wharf and chooses the ''Pequod''. Name Ishmael says that ''Pequod'' was named for the Algonquian-speaking Pequot tribe of Native Americans. Melville knew of the trib ...
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