Fore-Telling, not Foreshadowing

Since the majority Moby-Dick is overly descriptive and informative, it seems kind of strange that Ishmael nearly explicitly states future events in a weak attempt at foreshadowing.  It comes as a surprise to me that the expectations of what is going to happen later in the novel, especially since, “Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters,”(315). This is clear throughout the book, with much mentioning of the “aforementioned” such and such, usually involved in the devotion of an entire chapter to describing a rope, or an area of a boat (ie. The Line, or The (aptly named) Crotch). One would think that an event as major as Queequeg’s impending doom, which was made obvious in the beginning of the novel, would take up at least two or three chapters, rather than just a mere sentence or two.  There is much back and forth between subjects, mentioning them all in one chapter, then taking the next few subsequent chapters to discuss each individual subject in further detail, like the introduction of Chapter 73 that seems to needlessly mention the fact of the whale head hanging over the side of the ship, but declines to further elaborate on the subject at that time. Why mention it then, if it’s not a pressing enough topic to address immediately? Why not just wait, Ishmael, and talk about things when you intend to completely finish talking about them? And the aspects an audience is most concerned with, namely the action, are briefly addressed in a single sentence, such as the “peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing to always to borne in the mind of the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in subsequent scenes,” (360), or in the conclusion of Chapter 80, “that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know,” (383). Why does Ishmael not devote as much description to these hints? Is it his attempt at being subtle? If he were being subtle, why not instead just surprise the reader instead of leading them toward what they should be expecting? But Elijah and Gabriel’s screaming portents that bad bad things will happen in the voyage of vengeance upon Moby Dick seem to pretty clearly delineate the fate of the Pequod and its crew under Ahab; it obviously won’t end entirely happily. It struck me as strange that so much verbosity would be spent on the minutest details, but that the major hints are simply stated without nearly as much eloquence.