Moby Dick

I find myself very interested in thinking about the purpose of the chapter “Cetology”. Considered problematic at the time of publication, the Cetology chapter has been puzzling to many readers and has posed problems for some of the critical readings that scholars have brought to the table in order to analyze the novel. I believe however that the Cetology chapter is an important part of the early stages of the novel and I do not feel that its inclusion is problematic. If one looks at this chapter as a strong display of Ishmael’s voice in the text then one can draw a few possible conclusions about Ishmael and hopefully understand him better.

Ishmael seems to have a case of “whale-mania”, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Cetology chapter. The reader is given a very accurate look at the inner workings of Ishmael’s mind. I feel as if the Cetology chapter is a strong example of Ishmael’s depression. I would wager that classifying whales in a self-created taxonomy was a pastime as infrequent at the time of the novel’s publication as it is today! Ishmael is not your average man; he has strange pastimes and an obsession with whales that is almost psychotic. Could Ishmael be drowning his sorrow in scientific thinking? This certainly seems plausible seeing as he was looking for a whaling vessel so that he could escape the depression he found on land. Ishmael’s Cetology could easily be an avenue for escaping thinking about his life on land, acting as a vehicle to escaping his introspective thoughts.

But does Ishmael do a good job of escaping his introspection by thinking of nothing but whales? The answer seems to be a resounding “no”. Ishmael’s most insightful philosophic moments come when describing whaling, an activity that he supposedly is doing to avoid his introspection. Arguably the chapters that anthropomorphize whales are actually the moments in the novel most telling about how Ishmael feels about people. This is not to say that Ishmael is putting on an act when he says he is going to talk to us about whales and whales alone, but it is definitely an indicator that try as he might Ishmael can not avoid thinking about the relations of people with each other, their government, and with their God regardless of where he is located.

The fact that Ishmael has put as much thought into whale classification as he has does suggest that he is a somewhat learned person, and I feel that this is another contributing factor to his depression. Think for a moment of the restricting force that is determinism. If Ishmael is going through the motions in a preordained life he has many things to be troubled by. Is his intelligence his own? Is his depression a punishment from God because he is damned? Is it possible for him to escape that depression by sailing on a ship? Jonah set sail in an attempt to escape the destiny that God had given him, but of course as any New England Protestant would know, you cannot sail away from an omnipresent God.

Ishmael certainly reflects Jonah in this early stage of the novel, and the Cetology chapter definitely suggests that Ishmael is trying his very best to not think about the possible predestination that God has in store for him. Again, Ishmael seems to be no good at escaping these thoughts as all of his talk about whales and whaling amounts to philosophic monologues on the human experience, but the reader could’ve called this given the story of Jonah now, couldn’t they?

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