In this chapter we pause the narrative once again, to return to Ishmael’s wide berth of knowledge concerning the worldly and historical preconceptions of what whales look like, based on depictions of artists and scientists that have never seen a living whale. As can be expected, they’ve got it all wrong : “Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars (288).” 

This pause, for suspense, serves as a narrative reminder that we are about to embark into the unknown, and never seen before. The great leviathan is about to be viewed in its natural environment, thrashing in the roiling sea. This chapter is a reminder, that in the grand scope of historical documentation, from the ancient Egyptians to Melville’s present, there has been very little understanding of the size, or scope of such a marvelous creature. And then, there is the reminder, that the only way to be intimated with the sight of the whale, is to embark on the dangerous and often ill-fated task of whaling.

What is interesting is that Ishmael seems to be most focused on the one thing these images, skeletons, and even carcasses can not capture, it soul: “even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch (289).” To stare into the eye of the living creature, one must meet it in it’s living state, submerged and alive within the water.