As one LDS scholar puts it, "That Melville could have used The Book of Mormon in writing Mardi is apparent." The island of Serenia in the novel could well be Nauvoo, or Joseph Smith’s utopian flights of fancy about what Nauvoo could have been after they drained the mosquito-ridden swamp.

Melville enjoyed all this mischief. There are many sly lines like "I now perceived that I might be a god as much as I pleased," which may have been a dig at Smith. The god of Serenia is named Alma, after the prophet in the longest book of The Book of Mormon and there is a parody of Mormon missionaries and their talk of paradise where everyone is a “brother.” Even the title of the novel means "Land of Men," which Nauvoo certainly was. All the main characters except for the hero seem to be converted to Mormonism by the end, and one, the philosopher of course, has visions of angels and the cosmos like Joseph Smith himself.

Melville's hero at the end of Mardi is on his own though, escaping through the gap in the reef, into the endless sea, like Odysseus escaping Calypso – Taji chasing the beautiful white captive Yillah. She is, we might say, more attractive than any white whale. Like Joseph Smith, distracted by beautiful women and dreams of Celestial Marriage, he is chasing a chimera.