What is the title of Chapter 1 of Moby-Dick?

The title of Chapter 1 of Moby-Dick is “Loomings.”

The chapter introduces Ishmael, the novel’s first-person narrator, with the famous opening command, “Call me Ishmael.” Rather than beginning with Captain Ahab or the white whale, Melville starts with an unnamed sailor explaining why he periodically goes to sea. Ishmael presents maritime travel as an answer to melancholy, frustration, and the feeling that life has become stagnant on land.

“Loomings” establishes the novel’s distinctive mixture of storytelling, philosophy, humor, and symbolic suggestion. The title implies something emerging indistinctly on the horizon, fitting a chapter in which Ishmael’s personal restlessness gradually points toward the voyage of the Pequod and its encounter with Moby Dick.

Readers sometimes confuse Chapter 1 with “The Quarter-Deck,” Chapter 36, where Ahab publicly reveals his vengeful purpose, or “The Chapel,” Chapter 7, which occurs in New Bedford. “The Carpet-Bag” is Chapter 3, describing Ishmael’s arrival at the Spouter-Inn and his meeting with Queequeg. Moby-Dick contains 135 numbered chapters, along with the opening extracts and etymology.