Simply put, I think the extracts chapter really put into perspective of what the audience can expect out of the book. Take a shot every time you read the word “Leviathan,” and I’m sure you’ll be feeling it by the end. Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Rabeleis, Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms, Paradise Lost, Ibid, list goes on. I personally know the Leviathan as a mythical creature in different kinds of media, but knowing its history from the Hebrew Bible, it goes to show just how much a Whale represented back then. It’s this huge, imposing, mythical creature to these people in the whaling industry, and I can already picture the kind of damage that is going to happen in this book. I specifically want to connect this description and this mention of Leviathan to a point Ishmael makes in chapter 1.

He mentions this large chunk about money and payment, saying, “Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of…The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,–what will compare with it?” (6) We understand from the background of whaling that the industry utilizes (I hope) most parts of the animal, more specifically for things like blubber and oil. Ishmael makes it clear that going to sea as a sailor has more of a benefit than a passenger thanks to the work involved in such. Going after this “Leviathan” like creature surely poses a monetary benefit, but I think that this passage spells disaster. With how thick of a book Moby Dick is, I am so certain that Melville is loading this up to be a set of trial and tribulation that doesn’t end up keeping Ishmael’s monetary attention. I get a selfish kind of read from his statement about being paid, and while I can agree that getting paid is a great feeling, this Leviathan creature has to be humbling, or else I’m going to be very disappointed.