Plot Summary
In Chapter 32, Ishmael pauses the narrative of the Pequod's voyage to present a comprehensive classification of whales. He begins by surveying the existing scientific authorities on cetology—citing Captain Scoresby, Surgeon Beale, Baron Cuvier, and John Hunter—and finds them all inadequate. Declaring the sperm whale the true king of the seas over the long-reigning Greenland (right) whale, Ishmael announces he will attempt his own system of classification.
He first settles a foundational question: defying Linnaeus, he insists on calling the whale a fish, defining it simply as "a spouting fish with a horizontal tail." He then organizes all whales into three "Books" based on size, borrowing terminology from the printing trade: Book I (Folio) for the largest whales (Sperm Whale, Right Whale, Fin-Back, Hump Back, Razor Back, and Sulphur Bottom); Book II (Octavo) for mid-sized whales (Grampus, Black Fish, Narwhale, Killer, and Thrasher); and Book III (Duodecimo) for the smallest (Huzza Porpoise, Algerine Porpoise, and Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). Each species receives a brief character sketch mixing natural history with humor and personal observation.
Character Development
Ishmael emerges in this chapter as both scholar and showman. His voice shifts between that of a serious naturalist and an irreverent humorist, revealing his intellectual ambition and self-awareness. He references his own whaling experience alongside classical authorities, establishing credibility while simultaneously mocking the pretensions of academic classification. His willingness to declare "I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish" shows his independence of mind and preference for practical knowledge over institutional orthodoxy.
Themes and Motifs
The limits of human knowledge: Ishmael repeatedly emphasizes that cetology is incomplete and perhaps incompletable. His famous closing line—"This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught"—extends beyond whales to encompass all human attempts to systematize nature and experience.
Order versus chaos: The chapter dramatizes the human impulse to impose rational categories on a chaotic natural world. Ishmael calls his task "the classification of the constituents of a chaos" and acknowledges that every whale-naturalist before him has "split" on the rock of classification.
The book-as-whale metaphor: By naming his categories Folio, Octavo, and Duodecimo—all book sizes— conflates the act of writing with the act of scientific inquiry, suggesting that both are attempts to contain the uncontainable.
Literary Devices
Extended metaphor: The entire bibliographic classification system (Books, Chapters, Folio, Octavo, Duodecimo) serves as a sustained metaphor linking the study of whales to the craft of literature itself.
Cataloguing and enumeration: employs epic catalogues—lists of whale authors, whale species, and whale names—echoing the classical tradition of Homer and the Bible while subverting it with comic deflation.
Irony and self-deprecation: Ishmael undercuts his own authority throughout, declaring "I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete must for that very reason infallibly be faulty," transforming potential failure into philosophical wisdom.
Allusion: References range from the Book of Job and Jonah to Linnaeus, the Cathedral of Cologne, and Charing Cross, weaving together sacred, scientific, and everyday registers of knowledge.