: I wish I had noticed before there was a Manual of Style for Novels! This article would have been closer to going into a higher category than it is now. Thanks for supplying the manual, I made a print which I will study. As for now, it might be useful to point out that: 

 * the manual, section "Major themes," points to "The Cambridge Companion" series as a useful source. The Melville volume appeared in 1998, but for Melville such a guidebook was published in 1986: John Bryant's (ed.) Companion to Melville Studies (1986). This book, with chapters written by leading Melville scholars, is still the superior one. The essay on Moby-Dick, written by Bezanson, is quoted in the note 28 of the MD article on Wikipedia, though that number might be changed any minute of course. 
 * Since Moby-Dick is available in numerous editions and the chapters are mostly no longer than a few pages, I propose this article adopts as standard reference not the page numbers, but the chapter titles only, so that this article is handy for all readers regardless which edition they own; 
 * the section "Characters" state that most article will not need a separate section, because the Characters might be introduced in the Plot. MD is a work for which a separate section "Characters" is probably worth retaining, but it is now very long and can be tightened by simply shortening the references of page numbers: it is not necessary to state every time that the quotation is from Moby-Dick.