Jonah

Chapter nine of the novel contains Father Mapple’s enthusiastic sermon taken from most of the book of JONAH while Chapter 102 finds Ishmael attempting to describe a few of the “interior structural features” of a whale, when a word of caution emerges: “…have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan…” Not only does Melville evoke the image of Jonah inside the great fish, as seen in JONAH 3:1-10, but also that of the Biblical Leviathan.