Dylan's description ends with an acknowledgment: "That theme, and all that it implies, would work its way into more than a few of my songs. The second mate, John Hall, is identified as Stubb in an annotation in the book's copy of crew member Henry Hubbard, who also is identified as the model for Pip: John Backus, a little black man added to the crew during the voyage. Instead, they may be interpreted as "a group of metaphysical parables, a series of biblical analogues, a masque of the situation confronting man, a pageant of the humors within men, a parade of the nations, and so forth, as well as concrete and symbolic ways of thinking about the White Whale".

The one surviving leaf of proof, "a 'trial' page bearing the title 'The Whale' and the Harper imprint," [145] shows that at this point, after the publisher had been found, the original title still stood. The British reviewers, according to Parker, mostly regarded The Whale as "a phenomenal literary work, a philosophical, metaphysical, and poetic romance".The oration by Ellison's blind preacher Barbee resembles Father Mapple's sermon in that both prepare the reader for what is to come.

In addition to cetological works, Melville also consulted scattered literary works that mention or discuss whales, as the opening "Extracts" section of the novel demonstrates.Thomas Tanselle explains that for these earlier books, American proof sheets had been sent to the British publisher and that publication in the United States had been held off until the work had been set in type and published in England.