Moby-Dick

:For the Led Zeppelin song, see Moby Dick (song).

Characters

The crew-members of the Pequod are carefully drawn stylizations of human types and habits; critics have often described them as a "self-enclosed universe."

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Ishmael is what the narrator calls himself. "Call me Ishmael" is one of the best-known opening sentences in English language literature. A newcomer to whaling, Ishmael serves as our eyes and ears aboard the Pequod. He is, at the end, the only witness alive to tell the tale. Ishmael was the name of the first son of Abraham in the Old Testament. The Biblical Ishmael was born to a slave woman because Abraham believed his wife, Sarah, to be infertile; when God granted her a son, Isaac, Ishmael and his mother were turned out of Abraham's household. The name has come to symbolize orphans and social outcasts. From the beginning, Ishmael tells us that he turns to the sea out of a sense of alienation from human society. Ishmael, like Melville, has a rich literary background that he brings to bear on his shipmates and their adventure.

Related Topics:
Ishmael - Ishmael - Abraham - Old Testament - Sarah - Isaac

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Ishmael resembles Melville himself in many ways, as well as the narrator of Melville's White-Jacket: The World in a Man-of-War. All are literary, reflective types who see their shipmates as exemplars of human nature and the universe, and tell their stories with a wealth of philosophical reflection. "White Jacket" is – as symbolized by the garment that gives him his name –very much an outsider to his crew. Ishmael himself sometimes completely vanishes into Moby Dick: toward the end of the novel it can be easy to forget that it is being told by a first-person narrator and not simply an omniscient narrator. In many ways the Pequod is a ship of outcasts that manage to form a complete society among themselves. Ishmael is perhaps its voice, or its self-consciousness.

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Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship Pequod. Having lost a leg to Moby Dick on their last meeting, Captain Ahab is consumed with the desire for revenge. He has a peg leg made of whale bone, and a livid white scar that runs from head to toe and looks like the mark which a bolt of lightning leaves in the bark of a tree. There are two Ahabs named in the Bible, one a King of Israel, the other a blasphemous prophet delivered by God to be killed by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. The captain is named after the king, who is described in the novel as "bloodthirsty."

Related Topics:
Ahab - Blasphemous - Prophet - Nebuchadnezzar - Babylon

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Moby Dick is a livid white sperm whale who has been attacked by multiple whaling ships, but has been able to destroy his attackers. Melville spelled the whale's name without a hyphen, but used a hyphen in the title of the book.

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Mates

Starbuck, the young First Mate of the Pequod, is a thoughtful and intellectual Quaker.

Related Topics:
First Mate - Quaker

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:"Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance... is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward." --Moby-Dick, Ch. 26

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Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it madness to want revenge on an animal that lacks the capacity to understand such human concepts. Starbucks Coffee is partly named after him; see http://radio.weblogs.com/0118865/stories/2004/08/03/theConciseAndCorrectExplanationOfTheStarbucksNamingMyth.html.

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Stubb is the second mate of the Pequod, who always seems to have a pipe in his mouth and a smile on his face. "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests."--Moby-Dick Ch. 27

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Flask is the third mate of the Pequod. "A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered."--Moby-Dick Ch. 27

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Harpooners

Queequeg the harpooner is a "savage" cannibal from a fictional island in the south seas. The son of the chief of his tribe, he befriends Ishmael in Nantucket before they leave port. Queequeg is a skilled harpooner on Starbuck's boat. His behaviour is both civilized and savage.

Related Topics:
Queequeg - Cannibal - Harpoon

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Tashtego is described as a "savage" -- a Native American harpooner. The personification of the hunter, he has turned from hunting land animals to hunting whales. Tashtego is the harpooner on Stubb's harpoon boat.

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Daggoo is a gigantic "savage" African harpooner with a noble bearing and grace. Daggoo is the harpooner on Flask's harpoon boat.

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Fedallah is the sinister leader of Ahab's secret harpoon boat crew. "all and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head." Moby-Dick Ch.48

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