American Literature
Although the novel is a work of fiction, Melville included sequences of chapters concerned largely with
an objective discussion of the properties of whales. The observations, voiced through the narrator Ishmael, were largely drawn from Melville's own
firsthand experiences in whaling in the 1840s and include observations of various species from the order of Cetacea. The chapters in which Melville
discusses whales in a scientific manner, though connected with the story of Captain Ahab and the Pequod, are often omitted in abridged versions of
the novel.
Melville's observations are not a complete scientific study, even by standards of the day. Nevertheless, because of the general lack of knowledge
about whales in the middle 19th century, the taxonomy in the novel provides a glimpse of the knowledge of whales by the whaling fleet and
naturalists of the era. Though 19th century science is of only historical interest, his command of the English language, or at least of its Yankee
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