In the opening several chapters of “Moby-Dick,” Melville surprised me with his dry humor, surprisingly (for his time period) tolerant views, and sexual suggestiveness. Ishmael’s encounter with Queequeg encompasses all three of these themes. Queequeg starts as a primarily comedic character. After an uncomfortable night as bedmates, Ishmael wakes up in a loving embrace with Queequeg, who proceeds to both shave and skewer breakfast meat with his harpoon. However, after the sermon, Ishmael begins to see Queequeg as an (roughly) equal “bosom friend,” even taking part in Queequeg’s cannibalistic rituals. One question I had for the class is whether Melville’s characterization of Queequeg is racist or tolerant. While it seems pretty racially radical that, in the 1800s, a black and white man could not only board at the same hotel, but also sleep in the same bed, Queequeg fits the stereotype of the noble savage pretty well. Queequeg can almost be equated to the sea for Ishmael—he is the unknown, the wild, and the savage. They both represent a total isolation from Western society, in both a freeing and potentially dangerous way.
Melville’s representation of religion is also interesting. The church Ishmael attends is set up to represent a ship, mast and all, and the preacher barks nautical terms at the congregation before delivering a sermon on Jonah and the whale. In way, Melville seems to be accepting the ocean as a representation of God. Water and God, Melville points out, have many parallels, especially for sailors. Both are eternal, both are omnipresent, and, as Melville points out in the first chapter, they both are both magnetizing and dangerous. Although Ishmael seems, at first to be a “good Christian”, he takes part in Queequeg’s heretic pagan ceremony as a sign of their friendship. This might represent a ceding of the typical monotheistic deity for sailors to be unified under their one true god: the ocean.
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