EverydaySpy Podcast - The SECRET Message In Moby Dick's Final Chapter | Day 11

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/4j4CPAZ I just finished reading Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, and I'm shocked by how much the ending of this book moved me. SPOILER ALERT: I share the ending of Moby Dick in detail as I deliver my analysis of the lessons, insights, and relevancy shared in the final chapters. In many ways, finishing this book is the completion of a 30-year journey for me, and I'm overwhelmed with humility and gratitude as I share these thoughts on a book that for so long has been impacting the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I just finished the book, Moby Dick, and I was so inspired by the end that I had to share with you what moved in me when I read the final words. You can probably tell just by looking at me how incredibly out of the ordinary this video is. I don't have my hair like I normally do. This is like my workout samurai bun. I'm not wearing my normal branded T-shirt. Like, this is me. Literally, I just jumped off of the bike in the middle of my triathlon training to share with you my feelings. because as I was sitting there sweating and breathing and listening to the story of Moby Dick,

it was just absolutely compelling. So if you haven't read Moby Dick and you have no intention to read Moby Dick, you can keep listening. If you do have the intention to read Moby Dick and you don't want to have the end spoiled, you should really stop listening now. If you have already read Moby Dick and you know the end, you are also going to enjoy this video. But here I go, this is what Moby Dick meant to me as I finished those final words in the final chapter after months. of reading this book. First of all, it was shocking when I realized I had no idea what to expect at the end of Moby Dick. I mean, it's like the best kept ending, the best kept spoiler, the best kept secret

of all time. I'm 44 years old. I'm relatively well educated. I'm very experienced in terms of world travel and books and knowledge and literature. And I had no idea how the book ended. And when you stop to think about the fact that it was first published in 1851, that means this secret is almost 200 years old. That is amazing, right? If you don't know how Moby Dick ends or if you're uncertain yourself of how it ends, that means a spoiler has been protected from you just as long as it was protected from me, which in and of itself is kind of a mind-boggling idea, right? So as I was approaching the end of the book, it became very exciting to me because I really didn't know how it was going to end. Here you've got this ruthless Captain Ahab who's going after this whale who has like

this mythic reputation and who the only way you've ever learned about Moby Dick is through the story of Ishmael and through Ishmael's experience with Ahab and all stories about the whale are that the whale is evil and malicious and intelligent and devious and devilish. So you have this negative idea of the whale and this negative idea of Ahab. So who do you side with? Who do you support in this quest at the end, at the culmination of almost 140 chapters of book, I didn't know who I was rooting for as I came to the end of this book. And that immediately made me realize that in life, who are you rooting for? Are you rooting for yourself? Are you rooting for your kids? Are you rooting for your spouse? Are you rooting for someone else? When it comes to political parties,

are you rooting for the left? Are you rooting for the right? Are you rooting for good? Are you rooting for evil. Who thinks that your good is evil? Who's good do you think is evil? You can see how mind-boggling the question can be when you really stop to think about everyone has evil in them. So who do you root for? And that's where I found myself at the end of Moby Dick. Who do I root for? Who wins? Who should win? How is justice served? How is villainy served? And I didn't know the answer. This is where the spoiler starts. This is where I start telling me the details about the end of the book. If you don't want to go on this ride with me, you don't have to.

But if you keep watching, I will spoil the end of Moby Dick for you because it is such a powerful ending. For anyone who doesn't intend to read it, there is so much to learn and unpack in those final pages. And especially when I run what I learned from Moby Dick through my lens of the world as a spy, it absolutely humbles me. In the last few chapters of Moby Dick, the ship, the Pequod, which is captained by Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with killing, hunting and killing Moby Dick. They find Moby Dick, and they hunt him for three consecutive days. And each of those three days, they have an encounter with Moby Dick, where they fight him. And each time they fight him, he destroys boats.

He kills people. So on day one, they drop whaling vessels from the main. ship and they row out to hunt Moby Dick. They hit him with harpoons. He slashes back with his tail and he destroys a boat. He capsizes a boat with Captain Ahab in it. And Ahab literally fights the whale off by holding his teeth, fighting his jaws as Moby Dick almost swallows one of the whaling ship's whole. And they barely escape with their lives back to the Piquad and Moby Dick flees and runs away. They chase him overnight into day two. And on day two, again, they find him and they find him when he bursts out from the water something called breaching and it's

this spectacular appearance of moby dick and they all set forth on their wailing dinghies again to try to harpoon him and kill him and in that fight moby dick destroys all three of the boats he knocks people off he sends splinters flying he gets harpooned another few times now mind you before the quod finds Moby Dick. Moby Dick has just fought and survived against another whaling vessel. So Moby Dick has been lanced with multiple harpoons at this time. He's bleeding from all over his body. And he's described as this gargantuan whale, this giant sperm whale, far bigger than any scientifically a reasonable expectation. But you can picture in your mind this titan of a whale and how old this whale must be. In fact, he's called the white whale because he has

white markings on his skin, on his forehead and on the hump of his back. So he's so old, he's essentially turning gray, even though the rest of his body is that jet black or dark blue color that you would expect from a whale. So he, again, on the second day, he's victorious, and he destroys boats and he kills people and he survives multiple harpoonings. And he flees the Pequod again. Overnight, the night of the second night, there are no main whaling dinghies anymore. The only boats left are the spare boats, the life boats essentially, that are left to actually hunt the whale. And Ahab is so furious and so obsessed with the fact that he's had multiple encounters with Moby Dick. And in each encounter,

Moby Dick has bested him and his crew and the Piquot, that Ahab is actually rationalizing that he himself, Ahab himself, is fighting for good because he has been spared from each of the two previous battles. So Abhab, Ahab is starting to believe that he's untouchable. Ahab is believing that he's not going to die. He had a soothsayer who previously told him, a fortune teller who previously told him he was going to survive to the end, that there would be a survivor from the encounter with Moby Dick, and that survivor was likely to be Ahab. So Ahab believed then, no matter how the fight with Moby Dick turned out, Moby Dick would die and Captain Ahab would live. That's what Ahab believes in. As each encounter happened, his belief was reinforced. So on the morning of the third day,

when they again spot Moby Dick. Again, Moby Dick breaches out of the water. And it's this incredible idea to think that this whale has been fighting for his life, not just for the last three days, but for many days before that as other whaling vessels harpooned him and tried to kill him. And still this whale has so much energy on the third day of this fight that he breaches fully out of the water, his whole body springing from the ocean,

and then coming down in a large crash. sending waves towards the Piquad, the main vessel that has Captain Ahab in charge. And on this third day, there's this incredible moment where Captain Ahab speaks to his first mate, a man named Starbuck, and they shake hands and they have this moment of kind of leadership intimacy where Ahab tells Starbuck that he doesn't know what he's sailing into. He doesn't know whether there will be victory at the end of this or death, but that he must go forward anyways. And Starbuck in his mind is looking at the captain and thinking to himself, you don't have to fight this fight. We can all just go home. We can stop now before any destruction

happens. We don't have to fight. And it's this moment of tension between this obsessed captain and this first mate. And again, you don't know who's right. You don't know who to root for. Do you root for the person who's so ambitious and so driven that he's come halfway around the world to hunt this whale? Or do you root for the person who's, who's, you root for the person who's who's being rational, who's being conservative, who's being protected. Which one is right? Which one do you root for? You don't know. And Melville does such a great job. The author does such a great job in presenting you as the reader with these dilemmas. Dilemma after dilemma, what do I do? How do I choose? And it's so real. It's so real because in everyday life we have these

dilemmas. What's the right thing to do with our children? What's too much that spoils them? What's not enough that makes them feel unloved? What's the right amount of attention? What's too little attention? How do we choose a job? Is it the right job? Is it the wrong job? How many chances do we give to a friend, to a partner, to a spouse before we are feeling like they're taking advantage of us? How often are we taking advantage of others when we think that we're just taking an opportunity as it comes to us? Dilemma after dilemma, do you step forward or do you not step forward? Do you take the opportunity? Do you leave the opportunity?

When do you move and when do you wait? What an incredible experience through the pages of Moby Dick to be faced with these real world dilemmas in manifested on a ship in the ocean alone against this gargantuan leviathan of a monster whale. Ultimately, Ahab decides that he's going to pursue the whale. The spare lifeboats are dropped and they head out to hunt the whale who's just a mile off the bow. And as the whaling survival boats are rowing towards the whale, sharks come up from the ocean and start to bite at the oars. Seahawks come down from the sky and start to pluck at the flags and the men that are rowing. It's as if all of nature itself has come to this fight and has thrown in to do one of two things, either to fight Ahab, to fight mankind, to fight the things that man stands for, like ambition and

courage and drive, or Mother Nature has come down to warn Ahab, don't move any further, don't go any further. This is not a fight that you will win. This is not a fight that you need to engage. It reminds me of this joke that my father-in-law once told me. There's a man in a flood, and the man climbs to the roof of his house during the flood. And he prays to God. that he believes that God will save him. A helicopter flies over and a man shouts from the helicopter, grab the lion and I will rescue you. And the man on the roof says, I don't need you to rescue me.

I believe that God will rescue me. And then the helicopter leaves. And a few moments later, a boat comes by. And the boat comes by and has a man that says, come, jump into my boat. I will rescue you. And the man on the roof says, I don't need you to rescue me. I believe God will rescue me.

The flood continues and the man drowns. And the man is presented. He goes to the pearly gates to decide whether it goes to heaven or hell. And at the pearly gates, the angel asks him, why did you die? And the man says, God never came to save me. So I died in the flood. And then the angel says, God sent you a helicopter. God sent you a boat.

You rejected both of those things. Your death is your own fault. I know that's not very funny. But in Latin America, that's a joke. And I'm sure it sounds much funnier in Spanish. My point is that's exactly where my mind went when I was reading as Ahab set forth towards Moby Dick and the whole of the ocean was working against him, trying to resist him, trying to keep him from going forward.

Ahab recognized how dangerous the situation was. And he had this moment internally where he talks to himself and he says, I don't know what I'm going into. I am going into certain death. But will it be the death of the whale or will it be the death of Ahab? And as he has this internal conversation, he tells the other two boats, that are sailing, that are rowing to Moby Dick, he sends the other two boats back, and he keeps only his own boat, and he turns around and he looks at his men, and he tells his men that they are

no longer individuals. They are no longer men of their own mind and body and soul. They are extensions of Ahab. They are Ahab's arms and Ahab's legs, and that they are Ahab's body, and they will fight this whale together. During the fight with Moby Dick, the tension is excellent. Men get thrown from the boat, one man gets left behind, flung from the boat and left out to sea, out to sea with the sharks and the seahawks and all of nature that's fighting against this battle. They spear Moby Dick with a harpoon. Moby Dick fights back, almost capsizes the boats. And then Moby Dick decides to stop fighting Ahab and focus his intention instead on the actual Piquot, the boat, the mastership itself. So he leaves Ahab's dingy and focus his attention on the main shape.

the Pequod that has all of Ahab's crew. And when Ahab realizes that Moby Dick is leaving the fight so that he can attack the Pequod, all of a sudden Ahab realizes that he is humiliated. He's the captain of a ship and he's not on the ship. And the ship is in danger from the very whale that brought him out to sea. And because the sharks were snapping at the paddles of the men in the rowboat, the rowboat themselves, it can't paddle anymore because all the fins have been chewed off. And Moby Dick attacks the Piquot.

And as Moby Dick attacks the Piquot, the men on board the Piquot are watching. The men see this giant whale coming from the starboard side, and the whale rams them on the starboard side midship and drives a huge hole in the ship. And then the whale dives underneath the ship and breeches again on the other side, on the Liebert side and splashes down and takes a rest. And as the whale is resting, Ahab in his dinghy that's been bashed and battered with rove, with pedals that barely work and only four out of the five oarsmen still with him, charges the whale again. And the Piquot itself is sinking. And the men on board the

Piquot are having their final thoughts about how they'll never see their wives again. They'll never see their children again. And their families at home will never receive payment for the years that they've been on board, this whaling ship, hunting Moby Dick, that all is lost. It's such a sad, sad moment to realize everybody on that ship is about to dive because of one man's obsession with a whale. As Ahab in his sinking boat with his minimal crew again reaches Moby Dick, where Moby Dick is resting, he lances him with another harpoon. Moby Dick takes off at full speed as the line runs between the dinghy and the harpoon that's stuck inside Moby Dick. A loop forms in the rope. And the loop grabs Ahab by the neck and breaks his neck and flings him from the boat.

And Ahab is lost to sea. And that's how Ahab dies. He doesn't die in a battle. He doesn't die under with glory. He dies in an accident where a rope happened to just wrap around his neck while the whale was swimming away. And if you read the whole book, several accidents happen in the book, basically the same way where something gets tangled in the rope. It's a very common accident. It's almost nondescripts that it happens. It's such a. an inglorious way to die for a man like Ahab. And the whale, Moby Dick, is gone. He flees. He runs. And he's never heard from again. The book ends as the Piquad is fully sinking. And the men in the dinghy that was hunting Moby Dick are also sinking. And these men in both ships are perishing in the

vacuums that happen as boats sink and sucked crew down with them. Hundreds of men who were on board this ship are dying, and the story is being told by Ishmael. Where is Ishmael? Ishmael is the one man who got thrown from the boat, the one man who's been left in the middle of the sea, floating alone while this great battle happens all around him. And he's watching as everyone else dies. And then he's sucked into the wake of the sinking Piquad just in time for the sinking vortex to stop and for a coffin to float to the surface. And that coffin is sealed shut, so it's a flotation device. And Ishmael climbs aboard the coffin and is able to survive overnight floating on a floating coffin

until the next day when another ship finds him. And that's the end of Moby Dick. The whale lives, this ancient creature that we've only ever known through the whole book as being villainous and malicious and evil survives. And Ahab, all the men aboard the Pequod, die with one exception, the narrator himself, Ishmael, who throughout the entire book really doesn't do anything of any significance except observe. And he observes because that is what he claims to be in an observer, a man who boarded the whale boat in the first place only because he needed a

change of pace from his normal everyday life. And he thought that the fresh sea air on board of a whale boat would be just the change that he would need to appreciate his life. So think about that. There's so many incredible references to chew on at the end of this book. Ishmael's self-reflection. Ahab's self-reflection. It forces us to self-reflect ourselves. Do you align yourself more with Ahab, a man on a mission, a man obsessed, a man who believes he's doing the righteous thing, a man who believes he's doing the right thing as

he drives the people around him into discomfort, into pain, into danger? Do you feel like you are. or do you feel like you are Ishmael, someone who's bored, someone who's lost, someone who's looking for an adventure and willing to throw in your chips to follow somebody else's journey, to not be of significance yourself during the journey, but possibly to be the one person who survives at the end to tell the story of the journey. Who do you align with? Or do you align with the whale, the monster, the person that everyone is out to get, the focal point of everyone's anger and fury, who's labeled evil, who's labeled malicious, who's labeled arrogance, who's labeled to be

vicious, are you the whale? The whale that might simply be misunderstood. The whale that might just be a creature that's lived, a creature that has had its life threatened time and time again by men in boats with spears. And as a result of the constant threats that you've come up against, you have learned, that you must fight to survive. And that when you fight, you only fight enough to flee, but then the fight comes back to you again and you have to fight again and flee again and fight again and flee again

because that's what happened to Moby Dick. Is that you? Is that what you relate to? Do you relate to the whale that just keeps being the focus of conflict over and over and you fight back just enough so that you can escape only to have the conflict chase you down again, only to have the tyranny and the villainy and the evil crash upon your shoulders again.

It's not lost on me as a man of faith that Herman Melville's book has this final battle happening on the third day. It's on the third day that Moby Dick breaches the water in full glory and comes splashing down. It's on the third day that Moby Dick fights and wins this battle, defeats the Piquad, defeats Captain Ahab, and then lives. by escaping yet again. It makes me wonder if Melville was trying to paint a picture for us that paralleled the journey of Jesus Christ inside Moby Dick. That Moby Dick's justice, his resurrection, his ability to conquer death happened on the third day. On the third day. Every other wailing vessel that we meet during the book Moby Dick, every other whaling vessel is avoiding Moby Dick.

One vessel fought Moby Dick and when Moby Dick destroyed their whaling. boats, they turned around and they left him alone. And they warned Ahab. They warned him not to continue his fight. So here you truly have a story where the last remaining captain, the last remaining whale boat to dare challenging Moby Dick was the Piquot. And Moby Dick defeated the Piquot. In essence, Moby Dick defeated death. And now this ancient whale is still swimming around, living on, right? And Moby Dick swims alone. He doesn't swim in a pod. He's not the sire with multiple female whales that he's using to have to make offspring.

He's a lonely whale, a loner whale, which is not supposed to happen in whales of that caliber, of that age, of that strength. I loved this book. And if you've been following me for any period of time, then I've told you about my relationship with this book, my stepdad tried to make me read this book when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. and it was such a traumatizing experience for me to see this humongous book and to have my abusive stepdad telling me I must read this book because I must read more. That was his knowledge.

His logic was, Andrew, you need to read more. Andrew, you need to be smarter. Andrew, you need to essentially stop being annoying to me, so I'm going to force you to read a book. And I couldn't read, I couldn't read, I couldn't read Bobby Dick. I tried to read the first chapter and the language was too advanced and the imagery was too difficult and it was too complex for me. I couldn't get past the first chapter. But to make my dad believe that I was doing the right thing, I started lying.

So I started making up the chapters. I would skim them and find certain keywords and then skim him. I told you the story earlier in one of my spy journal memoirs on this channel. So when I picked up Moby Dick this year at 44 years old, I picked it up because I knew I was going to start training for a triathlon. And I knew that I was going to have hours and hours of time alone on foot in the water, on a bike. and I made Moby Dick my biking book.

And I have literally consumed every minute of that book on a bicycle. Somewhere around the world, I've been cycling in Australia. I've been cycling all over the East Coast and through the mountains in Colorado, consuming this book as I train. So it's a bit of a bucket list item to actually complete it, to finish it. And it makes me reflect on what my white whale is. What is my obsession? What is the thing that I've been chasing?

CIA teaches us that a tool to overcome anxiety and fear is to accept that there are only ever two outcomes. It will work or it will not work. That's it. There's only two outcomes. There's nothing to worry about because all decisions that you make will end in one of two outcomes. Your decision will work and you will get the outcome you want or your decision will not work and you will not get the outcome you want. When you boil everything down to that simple acceptance, you really can face any danger ahead of you. That's what I learned at CIA.

And that's what came to life for me in the pages of Moby Dick. Captain Ahab understood it will work or it will not work. He will die or the whale will die. Somebody must perish. Vengeance must be executed, right? There are only two outcomes where Ishmael didn't know what outcome he wanted. He was just along for the journey. And you can see how Melville appreciated the two men, the two characters differently because of their choices.

Because in reality, the world needs men of decisiveness and women of action. And the world needs people who don't take action, people who follow, people who observe. And you have to choose which person you're going to be. I love this book. I will never force my children to read this book. I wouldn't force you to read this book. I will tell you that if you are looking for a journey, if you're looking for an adventure inward, into yourself, there is no better book I can recommend right now than Moby Dick. It will challenge

you to pay attention to certain chapters. It will challenge you to follow through with difficult passages. It will challenge you to look and ask yourself hard questions about who you are and what you believe. It will challenge you to question the people around you and the decisions that you've already made and the decisions that you have yet to make. It will challenge. you in amazing ways, which is probably why this book continues to live on in history almost 200 years later as one of the greatest American classic novels ever written. Now my big question is, where do I go next? What do I read next?

What could possibly follow? Moby Dick, and part of me is going to throw that question to you. I want to know what you think I should read next. Here's my shortlist. First of all, I'm hooked on classics because I would have never imagined how momentous finishing Moby Dick would feel. So I have a few classics that I'm considering. First, Robinson Crusoe.

Second, Frankenstein. Third, Treasure Island. Those are the three that I'm torn between. And as you can see, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island both have to do with the ocean and the sea and survival. And Frankenstein is a book all about mortality and dark and gothic imagery, right? So leave your thoughts in the comments below. If you're still watching, I love that you're still watching. I love that I get to share this with you.

I need your guidance? What's my next book? I've got so many more miles I still have to bike. I've got so many more miles I still have to run before I'm ready for this triathlon. So I've got hours and hours of consumption ahead of me. So I need you to tell me, Frankenstein, Robinson Crusoe, or Treasure Island. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you so much for following my journal. As always, like, comment, share this episode with a friend, subscribe to the channel, and thank you for your time and patience. I will see you on the other So.