One of my favorite aspects of this novel is Melville’s attention to detail in his consistent descriptions of everything. We’ve spent a chapter on a singular rope, why Ishmael’s favorite whale is the sperm whale, and how to measure a whale skeleton if you happen upon one. A particular favorite fixation and talent that Melville expresses is the difference in each diverse character throughout the narrative. Based on dialogue, behaviors, and preferences, each character is clearly distinct from the others, able to firmly stand on their own in terms of personality and individual differences. It is for this reason that chapter 134’s description of the “oneness” of the crew is so wholly striking, setting this illustration of the Pequod and her inhabitants apart from any other moment in the entire narrative.
Melville describes how the crew aboard the ship was “one man, not thirty,” displaying a united sense of collective drive, in which “all varieties [of personality and ability] were welded into oneness” that “were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to” (Melville 606). It is interestingly placed in the novel; this oneness appears when it is most necessary (in the ultimate deathly pursuit of Moby Dick). The moments previously, the chapters that covered the blacksmith or carpenter, or when Starbuck so wholly disagreed with Ahab that he held his musket in his palm and contemplated, melted away into this singular oneness that trumped all else. It is in this unity that the ship joins as one, later in the narrative as one, as one shipwreck, and as one death.
Chapter 134 has got to be one of the more memorable chapters I can recall from this massive book. The collective drive that you mention is indeed interestingly placed in the novel, but the oneness also becomes uncanny and striking. When diversity had been described by Melville, only for it to come toppling down when everyone is “welded” together to follow the goal, it’s sincerely poetic. One mind, one shipwreck, one death, whatever it may be, individuality isn’t expressed, and it is what leads to the downfall of the Pequod. I never really considered that Melville had a specific style when it came to describing things, but the placement of the chapters have always been a focal point of Moby Dick. The sudden change of a crew with different sets of skills to becoming “one man” makes the rest of the book seem obsolete all of a sudden. Melville just adds to the shocking impact.