Moby Dick (1956 film) eyes. The head apparatus which could move like a rocking horse was employed when actors were in the water with the whale. Gregory Peck's last speech is delivered in the studio while riding the white whale's hump (a hole was drilled in the side of the whale so Peck could conceal his real leg). The "Pequod" was portrayed by, appropriately, the "Moby Dick". Built in England in 1887 as the "Ryelands", the ship came into the hands of the film industry in the 50s, and was also used in "Treasure Island". It was destroyed by fire in Morecambe, England in
Moby-Dick is structured around the two consciousnesses of Ahab and Ishmael, with Ahab as a force of linearity and Ishmael a force of digression. While both have an angry sense of being orphaned, they try to come to terms with this hole in their beings in different ways: Ahab with violence, Ishmael with meditation. And while the plot in "Moby-Dick" may be driven by Ahab's anger, Ishmael's desire to get a hold of the "ungraspable" accounts for the novel's lyricism. Buell sees a double quest in the book: Ahab's is to hunt Moby Dick, Ishmael's is "to understand what to make