In Chapter 85 ‘The Fountain’, the whale becomes voiceless, deemed as such through the human lens of Ishamel. In this claim, Ishamel asserts the importance of the voice “Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.” Those without a voice are unable to function within a society that aims to exploit, and the whale exemplifies what happens to those who cannot be  translated into such a society, people whose voices go ignored or misunderstood. The whale exists outside of words, a ‘profound being’ that Ishamel himself struggles to understand through words. Yet, a voice is situational in both Melville’s and the modern world we live in, those with the right privileges and history are heard, their voice and language is the norm. Melville uses the whale, a being who cannot communicate in the way humans do, to be representative of the masses all over the world with voices unheard, ignored or like the whale, untranslatable to the capitalist perspective of the whaler. 

The whale cannot be ‘forced to stammer’ its defense in living, and as consequence its body becomes a product, killed and sold to those who can speak, reflecting the scenes of U.S. history. The body as a product becomes systemically true with slavery, and there was no chance of defense if already deemed voiceless, like the whale is. The body as a product is also significant in a modern society, Ishmael notes this himself as the defense that the whale fails to make is for the purpose of ‘getting a living.’ These last few words serve a double purpose, in the case of the whale ‘getting a living’ can mean being allowed to live, but this is also translated on land with the working class as their bodies are used to make a living, a living that is unfair and does not value their lives in the same way as those demanding them to speak. ‘Getting a living’ does not mean much for Melville, for even those who speak their defense are half heard and not given much.