Quote 22
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, – longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. (95.1)
Yes, this is the whale’s penis. Ishmael’s talking about the giant penis of the sperm whale. And about the phallus-worship in ancient cultures. And yes, it’s supposed to be that funny.
Quote 23
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. (24.22)
Even before he’s done telling the story of the Pequod, Ishmael’s already imagining the prestige that his manuscript will garner when it’s finished. Or perhaps this is a moment where Melville’s own voice shines through, and he’s thinking about his own role as the author of Moby-Dick.
Quote 24
What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. (32.25)
It’s no accident that Ishmael divides whales into categories taken from libraries. Moby-Dick is a book titled with the name of a whale, and Moby Dick is a whale that can only be understood if he’s treated like a book.