Moby-Dick Ch. 104: The Fossil Whale

Summary

Ishmael says you cannot compress the whale into a small book. The subject is so huge that it deserves an imperial folio. He bought a heavy quarto dictionary by Dr. Johnson because the lexicographer's own bulk suited a whale author. Ishmael warns that to write a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme. No great book can be written about a flea, though many have tried.

He turns to fossil whales. He claims experience as a stone-mason and ditch digger to speak as a geologist. All fossil whales found so far belong to the Tertiary period. Bone fragments have turned up at the base of the Alps, in France, England, Scotland, and in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In 1842 a nearly complete skeleton was found on Judge Creagh's plantation in Alabama. Locals thought it was a fallen angel. Doctors called it a reptile named Basilosaurus. The English anatomist Owen proved it was a whale and renamed it Zeuglodon. Again Ishmael notes that skeletons give little clue to the living shape.

Standing among these ancient bones, Ishmael feels carried back before time began. He says Ahab's harpoon is older than Pharaoh's blood and Methuselah seems like a schoolboy. Whale fins appear on Egyptian temple ceilings at Denderah, carved centuries before Solomon. He ends with John Leo's account of an African temple built with whale-bone rafters, offshore rocks that kill passing whales, and a rib arch so tall a man on a camel cannot reach the top. Ishmael leaves the reader there to worship in silence if they are a whaleman.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Sizing Your Tools to a Whale-Sized Problem

Small kits snap on big jobs. Ishmael buys Johnson's quarto, says mighty books need mighty themes, walks Tertiary fossils and Zeuglodon, and places Ahab's harpoon before Pharaoh while whale fins swim on Egyptian ceilings.

Before you assign a one-pager to a platform migration, match reference weight to Leviathan, because the subject will expand you whether you planned for it or not.

Coming Up in Chapter 105

Next Ishmael asks whether whales have shrunk over time and whether hunters can wipe the species out. He compares buffalo slaughter to the sperm whale hunt and argues the whale may be immortal.

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Original text

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Chapter 104

The Fossil Whale

The Fossil Whale. From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship. Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to approve…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Flea or Whale Scope

Where is your team writing on a flea template for a whale problem?

Consider:

•Theme size?
•Tool weight?
•Bone labels?

Journaling Prompt

Write about one reference you need to upsize.

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The Fossil Whale

Summary