In Which the Last Three Words of the Last Chapter Are Made the Text of Discourse, Which Will Be Sure of Receiving More or Less Attention From Those Readers Who Do Not Skip It
- Melville loves these meta-moments.
- This chapter suggests that the only folks who think of anyone as "quite an original" are babies, the uneducated, or people who don't get out and travel. That is, they have no experience of the world and others.
- There are few originals in literature, and the narrator lists some: Hamlet, Milton's Satan, and Don Quixote.
- You can't have more than one original character in a text—that would be madness.
- Most of the time, the original is simply singular.
- More important, though, the original in literature is a stroke of luck. The author doesn't create it; it just happens.