Student Writing Handbook Fifth+Edition

244 / Types of Writing

How the final motif emerges can be represented this way:

Part Warp Woof Weaver

1 Necessity Free Will Chance

2 Vines Vines Sun/Life/Chance

2 Vines Vines Skeleton/Death/Chance

3 Storms Calms Chance

Thus, as Queequeg’s wooden sword by chance packed tightly or loosely the woof of free

will through the warp of necessity, so the sun, by chance, caused the vines to wrap themselves

around the idler’s skeletal ribs. Nevertheless, since death is part of life, i.e., since “Life enfolds

Death,” the mat of life cannot be completed until death occurs. As Thomas Gray puts it in his

“Ode for Music,” “Weave the warp and weave the woof,/ The winding-sheet of Edward’s grave.”

Thus, even though death is equated to chance, it is a chance that will inevitably come—fate,

if you will—and it is only when the mat is completely woven; only after necessity, free will, and

chance have intermingled into one piece; only after death can one see the full pattern of life.

Only then is the quest for life’s answers finished. So Starbuck notes as his end is near that

“Strangest problems of life seem clearing.” His mat is ready to be bound.

Numerous other incidents within the novel carry out the motif as well. Perhaps one of the

most obvious is the warp and woof of Ahab’s charts, the lines representing longitude and lati-

tude. Certainly, Ahab exerts free will in plotting the course of his ship across such warp and

woof. “The Chart” would seem to indicate that his calculations were quite scientific; but the ele-

ment of chance, the fact that the White Whale may not be there, is never denied. So Ahab plots

his life across his charts never knowing where death may chance to come. He knows, however,

that his death has been predicted as coming only by means of hemp. How interesting to note