The Right Whale's Head Compared to the Sperm Whale's
Chapter 75 of Moby-Dick by opens with Ishmael inviting the reader to cross the deck and examine the Right Whale's head, which hangs opposite the Sperm Whale's head described in the previous chapter. Where the Sperm Whale's head resembled a Roman war-chariot, the Right Whale's head bears what Ishmael calls an "inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe." He notes that an old Dutch voyager two centuries earlier compared its shape to a shoemaker's last, and jokes that the nursery tale's old woman who lived in a shoe could comfortably lodge inside it with all her children.
A Crown of Barnacles and a Sulking Lower Lip
As the observer moves closer, the head shifts in appearance depending on the angle. From the summit, the two f-shaped spout-holes make the whole head look like an enormous bass viol. The barnacle-covered crest on top, called the "crown" by Greenlanders and the "bonnet" by Southern fishers, resembles an oak trunk with a bird's nest in its crotch. Live crabs nestle on this bonnet, reinforcing the image. Ishmael then draws attention to the whale's massive hanging lower lip, which measures about twenty feet long and five feet deep, yielding some five hundred gallons of oil. He calls it a great "sulk and pout," suggesting this diademed king of the sea is a sulky-looking fellow despite his crown.
Inside the Mouth: Baleen, Whalebone, and Queen Anne's Fashion
Sliding over the whale's hare-lip into its mouth, Ishmael compares the interior to an Indian wigwam and wonders if this is "the road that Jonah went." The roof rises twelve feet to a sharp angle, and roughly three hundred scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone hang from each side, forming what Ishmael calls "Venetian blinds." These baleen plates, fringed with hairy fibres, strain seawater and trap small fish when the whale feeds. Historical voyagers described these structures as "whiskers," "hogs' bristles," and "fins." Ishmael notes that whalebone once furnished ladies' busks and corset stiffeners, reaching its peak during Queen Anne's reign when farthingales were in fashion. Even the modern umbrella, he observes, is "a tent spread over the same bone."
Stoic and Platonian: The Philosophical Contrast
The chapter closes with a direct comparison between the two heads. The Right Whale lacks the Sperm Whale's great well of spermaceti, ivory teeth, and slender lower jaw. The Sperm Whale, in turn, has no baleen, no huge lower lip, and scarcely any tongue. Most tellingly, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes while the Sperm Whale has only one. Looking at their expressions in death, Ishmael reads the Sperm Whale's broad brow as full of "prairie-like placidity" and "speculative indifference as to death," while the Right Whale's pressed lower lip suggests "an enormous practical resolution in facing death." He concludes with a famous philosophical distinction: "This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years."