Moby Dick Lesson Plan

In chapter 15, Ishmael explicitly comments on the various bad omens we've become aware of thusfar in our study of the novel. What purpose does this fulfill for the reader?

Melville deflates a great deal of the tension that he had been building throughout the previous chapters through Ishmael's self-aware observations concerning the various ill omens he has discerned. Ishmael notes the various signs of death, including the gravestones, the name of his previous innkeeper (Peter Coffin), and the gallows imagery, as if performing a symbolic literary analysis of the novel as he narrates.

Nevertheless, this does make the reader explicitly aware of the death-related imagery...