On page 71, captain Peleg interviews Ishmael; “
“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer – ever been in a stove boat?” Ishmael confesses he has only served in the merchant service, but never been whaling, to which Peleg replies;
“Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg? – I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the merchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed!” Peleg is clearly upset by Ishmael’s job experience, and goes as far as to violently threaten Ishmael to never speak of the merchant service again. However Ishmael proceeds to include, “Sir, I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the merchant—” when he is abruptly cut off by a disturbed Peleg. Ishmael has walked into a job interview and has insulted Peleg, then ignored Peleg’s request and verbally spat in his face again, all while trying to secure a whaling position. This interview would be disastrous for any man or woman, no matter how socially and verbally talented they might be, in trying to land a job, yet Ishmael replies quickly to another of Peleg’s later questions:
“I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.”
This remark evoked the following reply from Peleg,
“…Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon.” And with that Peleg follows up, “Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say tell Quohog there – what’s that you call him? Tell Quohog to step along.”
Ishmael’s divine (literally?) tongue not only granted himself passage on a 3 year whaling journey, but also a savage who had no affiliation with the required religious ties. That bit of public speaking is legendary, and under the circumstances, “Finding myself thus hard pushed”, shows how Ishmael reacts under pressure; godlike?
In another case, Ishmael confronts imperfection in the world when he deals with the publicly accepted image of whales. Most of Ishmael’s energy is spent preaching about the very whales he hunts. He describes them in great detail, immersing himself in every facet of their watery lives. In Chapter 55, the narrator states:
“I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all wrong.”
Our ever-knowing narrator set out to correct the perceived image of whales by society’s masses, and does so with authority.
After the Pequod has been hunting Moby-Dick for three days, and the ship has been completely destroyed by the famed whale, Ishamel is the sole witness to the carnage, and the only soul that Moby-Dick spares. In an ending as fitting as it’s beginning, Ishmael departs as he entered; with a biblical announcement:
“"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
Job.
Melville created a book that quite literally rivals the bible, yet on a more subtle level, Moby-Dick compliments it. Moby-Dick contains all the background of society during the time period, (like the bible), all the action with deeper morals at stake, (like the bible), and all the characters and their respective traits, from the bible. One can spend a pleasurably long time assigning the Moby-Dick cast to the corresponding biblical characters, but one role is certain. One can only wonder why Jesus choose to be called Ishmael…
