Part III — Navigation: Staying Pointed Home
The Barrels Question
Chapter 7 · A complete lesson on its own. Reading time: about 15 minutes, work included.
The best business question in American literature gets asked on the deck of a doomed ship, and the captain refuses to answer it.
The Pequod is a whaling ship — a commercial venture, funded by investors, crewed by men working for a share of the profits. Its business is barrels: whale oil, brought home and sold. But its captain, Ahab, has stopped hunting whales in general. He has an obsession — one particular white whale, the one that took his leg — and he's spending the ship, the crew, and the voyage chasing it.
His first mate, Starbuck, is the sober one aboard, and he confronts the captain with the question the whole enterprise hangs on. I came here to hunt whales, he says — not my commander's vengeance. Then, in language any businessperson can parse: even if you catch it, how many barrels will your vengeance yield you? What will it fetch in our market?
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