Olsen-Smith, Steven (2008). [Review of Bryant and Springer 2007]. Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, June 2008, 96–9. In direct translation from the Hebrew Bible; about Ishmael: "His hand in all, and the hand of all in him." I really loved the connection between these boys and, even though a lot of the jokes went over my head, a lot of their banter really made me giggle. Some of the characters were a little grating, but I won’t go into that. Less than two months after mentioning the project to Dana, Melville reported in a letter of June 27 to Richard Bentley, his English publisher:

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,— what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided all of this, especially the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own particular culture's history: "They were looking at a half of one percent of the evidence taken from a single culture. Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion". [6] Jo 2-I bet you have loads to say about that boob jokes bit. That just has “Jo Disapproves of This and Everything” stamped all over it. Benton, Megan (2000). Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300082135. , pp. 107, 132, 200Ishmael is part of a loose trilogy that includes a 1996 spiritual sequel, The Story of B, and a 1997 " sidequel," My Ishmael. Quinn also details how he arrived at the ideas behind Ishmael in his 1994 autobiography, Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest. Yet another related book is Quinn's 1999 short treatise, Beyond Civilization. The first of spin-off series from the Eric Vale books Secret Agent Derek 'Danger' Dale: The Case of Animals Behaving Really REALLY Badly came out in July 2014. Two other Derek Dale action adventures The Case of the Really REALLY Scary Things and The Case of the Really REALLY Magnetic Magnetic have now been released.

Bezanson argues that there are two Ishmaels. The first is the narrator, "the enfolding sensibility of the novel" and "the imagination through which all matters of the book pass." The reader is not told how long after the voyage Ishmael begins to tell his adventure, the second sentence's "some years ago" being the only clue. The "second Ishmael," continues Bezanson, is "forecastle Ishmael," or the "younger Ishmael of 'some years ago.'... Narrator Ishmael is merely young Ishmael grown older." Forecastle Ishmael is "simply one of the characters in the novel, though, to be sure, a major one whose significance is possibly next to Ahab's." From time to time there are shifts of tense to indicate that "while forecastle Ishmael is busy hunting whales, narrator Ishmael is sifting memory and imagination in search of the many meanings of the dark adventure he has experienced." [14]Jo - Wait just one second. He didn’t write it for girls? Is that what you’re saying? Just because it’s set in an all-boys school and mentions footie and rugby and boobs. That’s pretty sexist and I- These expurgations also meant that any corrections or revisions Melville had marked upon these passages are now lost.