Why does Melville include the section on etymology and all the literary extracts connected to whales at the beginning of the book? They have no direct connection to the book’s plot, nor does any of the information they provide prove essential to our reading of the book. What purpose do they serve?
The narrator never tells us his real name, instructing us instead to call him Ishmael. Your edition of the book provides a helpful footnote explaining Ishmael’s story as told in Genesis. What does the narrator’s choice of the name tell us about his character and personal history? Can you find anything in these first fifteen chapters — whether attributes of his character or desriptions of his past — that confirm that his choice of name is appropriate?
Much of this first section of the book concerns Ishmael’s introduction to and growing friendship with Queequeg. Why is their relationship important to our understanding of Ishmael’s character?
First-time readers of Moby-Dick are often surprised how much comedy the book contains. As with many effective comedies, part of what makes it funny is the mixture of high comedy, meaning wit, satire, and other forms of intelligent and clever humor, and low comedy, meaning anything connected to bodily functions. Consider any passage you consider particularly funny, and discuss what makes it that way.
You will have more opportunity for this, but have you read anything in the book yet that you would connect to Emerson’s ideas? Where? And would you say that Melville’s comments reflect an Emersonian principle, argue with it, or something in between?