Ishmael, after reading some of the mourning plaques in the Whalers’ Chapel considers the strange pulpit, which is a raised box that must be climbed into with a rope ladder, which the chaplain draws up behind him as a mark of spiritual isolation.

The character of the ‘famous Father Mapple’ is a former whaler who has devoted his old age to the spiritual needs of the surviving members of his trade. It is fascinating that these whale hunters put their spirits in the care of such a shamanic figure as would be understood as such by stone age hunters.

The reader wonders, has Melville the author vested a New England chaplain with the nature of a holy man more along the lines as those found among Queequeg’s people? Or, had the author on his outward bound whaling journey encountered just such a character?

The brief chapter ends before Father Mapple’s sermon with a considering of the nature of this curious pulpit shaped like a ship’s prow:

“What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable* winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete, and the pulpit is its prow.”

*Melville’s spelling and punctuation have been retained.