There were two primary extracts that stood out to me, especially considering their purposeful language and what it reveals about Melville, his story, and the overarching historical context. Firstly, on page xliii, Melville quotes Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation, which describes how people “saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear that they should run their ship upon them.” Here, the word “troops” really stands out to me. I researched it, and a group of whales is actually referred to as a “pod,” which was coined in the early 1800s. This timeframe suggests that “troops” was purposefully used, which implies an automatic sense of conflict towards whaling ships and a natural unity amongst whales.
Secondly, contrasting the usage of “troops” and the implication of battle from Schouten, Melville quotes Paley’s Theology on page xlv. In this, he writes that “The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity of the blood gushing from the whale’s heart.” The focus on the heart of the whale here is interesting, especially as hearts tend to humanize animals to audiences. Here, it’s explicitly used for perspective and sizing.
Both of these quotes reveal a significant amount of context on whales and whaling. Schouten’s quote points to an intentional use of aggressive language to point to whales as inherently unified and aggressive, almost justifying the violence performed against them on the whaling ships. However, Paley’s diction is, whether intentionally or not, a humanization of the whale. Even if the focus on a whale’s heart was used for scale, it’s still putting them into a general perspective for audiences.
Melville’s extracts really pinpoint how language is complex and loaded. You make an excellent point at the way readers can tackle their perspective based off of the extracts at the beginning of this book. I won’t lie, I definitely skipped over a couple of them without thinking about the significance, but when you mention these two extracts specifically, I do start to shift my mindset in how I think about these vast and large animals. Describing whales as “troops” isn’t something I really considered, mostly because I am familiar with calling a group of whales a pod. Troops implies some kind of idea of defense or even savagery in some cases, but the simple use of “Troops” does make it sound as conflicting as you mentioned. Audiences don’t always think about humanizing animals either, and while we can hold empathy or sympathy for them, they’re still animals. Even so, aren’t humans considered animals as well? Both humans and whales have aortas, responsible for carrying oxygen rich blood to the rest of the body as it is the largest artery. I can’t even begin to imagine how big a whale aorta is, let alone the fact that it only seems to reference the idea of the whale’s size in that extract.