The Bulkington Pass is on the south side of the Flask Glacier and west of Bildad Peak, a series of features that the United Kingdom Antarctic Place-names Committee named after characters from Moby-Dick.
Bulkington stands aloof but Ishmael says "this man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned)", that he will give a "little description of him".
"But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God – so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!"
Andrew Delbanco writes that Bulkington is a "natural aristocrat – an almost cartoonish paragon of manly virtue", the "democratic leader who commands respect out of trust and comradely love".
[2] Critics see resemblances to historical or mythological figures, such as Hercules, the Greek god,[3] or a tribute to J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), one of the many references in the novel to that painter of sea scenes and storms,[4] and to Edgar Allan Poe.
[7] Critics have long speculated that Bulkington was introduced in an early draft but was no longer needed when Melville changed his concept of the novel from a whaling adventure to a metaphysical tale focused on Ahab's quest.
Delbanco argues that Bulkington seems destined to play a major role in the book for he has "dignity, bearing, refinement", which make him Melville's first candidate to resist Ahab.
[8] Harrison Hayford speculates as part of a larger argument that Bulkington is one of a group of "unnecessary duplicates", one who was left "vestigial" when Melville changed the relation between the characters.