On Reading Moby Dick

So back in April, a friend mentioned that he had always wanted to read Moby Dick but never had. I happen to love the novel and suggested that we read it simultaneously and meet once a week or so to discuss it. Well, we are now on our third meeting and the first 375 pages, and once again I’m hooked right into Ishmael’s enthusiastic 

romanticism, Queequeg’s exotic heroics, Ahab’s monomaniacal revenge, and Moby Dick’s clandestine existence. 

“Call me Ishmael,” is the famous opening, yet notice that our narrator does not say that Ishmael is his name, only that he wishes to be called this (This reminds me of telling my kids to call me Dunbar!).

So if we looked up who this Ishmael character is, it turns out that he’s pretty interesting and important. It’s all really early Old Testament stuff and goes back to Ishmael’s father that old rascal known as Abraham. If you’re not familiar, Abraham is

important because he is the unifying early patriarch shared between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Although Abraham is married to Sarah, Ishmael’s biological mother is Sarah’s servant Hagar. Thinking herself infertile, Sarah allows this union so Abraham can have a son. All this is well and good until Sarah actually does conceive and give birth to Isaac. So now the trouble starts and the three religions that trace their roots back to Abraham begin to go their separate ways. In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab people and Muhammad is his direct descendent which makes him a pretty important dude. 

Jews and Christians tend to reject Ishmael and instead side with Isaac and look at him as the true heir of Abraham. In fact some Jewish and Christian people believe Ishmael was actually pretty evil and wicked. The biggest difference between the Jews and Christians when it comes to Ishmael is that he is used in Christianity to demonstrate the rejection of the old ways and Isaac is seen as the beginning of the new tradition leading to Jesus.

I’m not writing a religious blog, but I tell this because I’m fascinated that Melville wants some guy who demands to be called Ishmael to tell this story. Ishmael, the narrator, is multicultural and a religious multi-theist. He’s this cool mixture of mainstream traditionalist and outsider rebel. And, like many who will come after him, he 

establishes that objective voice which can be in awe of the eccentric and foreign Queequeg, yet at home in the Christian whaling chapel. Although many aspects of Moby Dick are incredibly modern, this non-judgmental first-person narrator is there from the start to let today’s reader know that this book isn’t just some dusty classic with little relevance. 

When the whalers spot a whale, they break up into squads and go after it in small row boats. Standing at the front of the small boat is a harpooner. This is what Queequeg is. The harpooner hurls the harpoon at the whale. The tail end of the harpoon is tethered to a very long rope. The whale takes off when the harpoon hits it and the rope line quickly uncoils. If you’re sitting in the boat, you have to be very careful not to get tangled up in this rope. So with that, here is a great line by that guy who demands to be called Ishmael.

“But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”