Moby Dick is widely considered one of the greatest literary creations in history. The density of meaning, the infinite possibilities of interpretation and the ambiguity of implications give the text many layers. Therefore, knowing that the reliability of a work of fiction is always somewhat unreliable, the audience must try to determine whether Ishmael, Melville's omnipresent and omniscient narrator, should be a trusted and reliable witness to all the events that transpire. they carry out on board. the Pequod, or an omniscient first-person narrator who spontaneously inherits the mysterious knowledge of all things surrounding the journey, even when he is not present. Placing Ishmael in the context of the story is where the first problem arises. Is Ishmael a regular, hard-working sailor seeking to breathe the fresh sea air? Or is Ishmael the first-person embodiment of a third-person omniscient narrator? The latter would be a rarity when considering the normal modes of narration in English literature. However, the possibility exists, and so one must look to the text to prove whether Ishmael knows information that could happen to the normal participant firsthand. Having established our hypothesis, we can then examine Ishmael's reliability and trustworthiness, what effect this literary device has on the tone of the text, and what the immediate and long-term effects of that narrative style are. The tone of Moby Dick changes frequently throughout the text. Early on, Ishmael claims to be a novice sailor who uses the sea as a means to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Whenever I find myself getting gloomy about the mouth; whenever there is a wet and drizzly November in my soul; every time I find myself involuntarily stopping in front of the coffin warehouses and closing the queue of every funeral I come across; and above all every time my hypoglycemia ("neurosis", as the glossa tells us) takes over me [...] I understand that the time has come to go to sea as soon as possible (18).Clearly, Melville intends his narrator to be an ordinary boy longing for some sort of adventure or release. This, however, forces us to question the existence of other narrative techniques within the text, that is, Ishmael's continuous display of scientific knowledge. For example, if one wanted to analyze the paradoxical nature of Ishmael's narrative transformations in relation to the tone of the novel, "Etymology" and "Cethology" would be good starting points. The etymology preceding the text consists of a long list of references to whales or the word “whale” throughout the history of literature, ranging from the Bible to Shakespeare. It seems that Melville is attempting to demonstrate the symbolism and importance behind the ideology of the white whale by proving its existence as a symbol over time. Hennig Cohen, of the University of Pennsylvania, provides an interesting perspective on the reasoning behind Melville's contrasting stylistic tones:[A]n The etymology of the word whale, which, for all its academic appearance, turns out to be incomplete, contains conflicting information, and it's slightly incorrect. This is followed by a series of excerpts or quotes about whales and whaling accumulated over the centuries, although these quotes are prefaced with the warning that they are not to be confused with true evangelical cetology. What is being said here is that the leviathan is real, very fat for the yield, and at the same time sublime, and for this reason it cannot be captured.No definition can define it, no knowledge system can categorize it. The structure of his story is a hunt for this rogue whale, symbolic of the search for absolute knowledge that will elude discovery, and indeed, this is the knowledge that will be found." From this helpful excerpt Now we can begin to trace the disparities in tone that make the ideologies behind Moby Dick so paradoxical. It seems that Melville desperately wants to show concrete proof of the existence of the whale as a symbol through Ishmael's speech, but at the same time create an elusive entity that would confuse any readers brave enough to attempt to break down its meaning. Later, in chapter 32, titled "Cetology," the reader is again exposed to a shift in the narrative when Ishmael veers off course into a scientific discussion their characteristics.The existence of this chapter is consistent with the etymological statement that the whale is a very real creature that exists within the boundaries and rules of our world; yet it is an elusive, indefinable creature, that of Moby Dick. The “Cethology” offered to us by Ishmael is similar to the etymology in that the tone of its existence and its purpose within the novel are paradoxical. The purely scientific chapter appears solely for Ishmael to clarify the physicality of the sperm whale. Interestingly, the effect is ambiguous, making the reader even more unable to understand exactly what Moby Dick is or symbolizes, as well as what Melville's stylistic intentions were: it was originally stated that this system would not be here, and at some point, perfected. You cannot fail to see clearly that I have kept my word. But now I leave my cetological system thus unfinished [...] The whole book is but a draft---no, but the draft of a draft" (125). At the conclusion of the scientific discourse on the leviathan, Ishmael admits to 'imperfection of the system he created However, even before this final statement of admission of failure in the classification of the whale, Ishmael provides numerous opinions of the "best and latest authorities" on cetology. Examples of quotations from these sources include "confusion," unfathomable,” “incomplete,” and “impenetrable.” This is how Melville intends to twist the reader's mind around the idea of ​​the mystery of Moby Dick while trivializing a chapter like "Cetology." While the chapter appears to be a fun way for Melville to add authority to his narrator and create confusion regarding the truth beyond Ishmael's expertise, it can be argued that the information provided in the system is somewhat reliable. David Sisk explains: Despite Herman Melville's jokes at the expense of serious cetologists like Scoresby, Beale, and Cuvier, the material he presents so humorously is no joke. Today's reader can still glean from this chapter a remarkable amount of accurate information regarding the identifying marks and behavior patterns of the earth's major cetacean species... Melville's prose, while playfully unscientific, remains sufficiently accurate that no of its fourteen descriptions poses a problem of identification. Sisk's comments bring together the idea that seems to sum up Melville's dual style of composing Moby Dick: total knowledge is something that will always elude man. Assuming that Melville knew what he was doing when he created the character of Ishmael, the tone of the novel seems to be designed to arouse opposite feelings in its readers. Many points of the text are paradoxical in this sense. Some of Ishmael's tales attempt to be scientific and mechanical, like his