June 28, 2019 - Chapters Forty-three and Forty-four

These two relatively short chapters have one curiosity each that I’d like to comment on here. In the first, the word “Cholo” is used by the narrator. As any fan of Al Madrigal can tell you, a “cholo” is a Mexican-American of a particular vintage, although the term is probably being used more broadly by Melville in the 1840s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the appearance of the word in Moby Dick is among the first appearances of the word in English.

In the second chapter, we have a footnote on a paragraph about sperm whale migration, telling us, “Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an official circular…” This is a curious construction. This note is presumably by a different narrator than the narration of the chapter. Is the narrator of the chapter Ishmael? Probably not, since it details the actions of Ahab while alone. Is the writer of the footnote Ishmael? That seems more possible but leaves open the question of who is narrating the chapter proper. Absent the dramatic stage directions of earlier chapters, we seem to have been given a third person omniscient narrator without being told.