“Call me Ishmael.” Our
narrator has been but leanly introduced as the wild Not-Isaac. Reading with an expectation of meaning,
however, one might find more in this character’s slender account of
himself. For instance, he is not a
character at all. Rather, he signifies
the absence of one. His name bears no
promise; homeless, wandering, one of the million sea-bound masses of Chapter
One—that is, he is you. Melville’s
famous opening line asserts the character of all humanity. This is why the line is so famous.
Melville spends a great deal of the book’s beginning explaining
this identity. The art of Moby-Dick slowly unfolds a conception of
the human being at once singularly dense and deceptively simple. Its power lies in continuous, profound
revelation, tempered always with humane humor and compassion. The opening chapters define the identity of
Melville’s universal character.
First, Ishmael is no hero:
“…nor, though I am something of a
salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such
offices to those who like them. For my
part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of
every kind whatsoever. It is quite as
much as I can do to take care of myself…”
Ishmael scorns to be honored. In his humility, in his humanity, he admits
self-preservation takes all his time. He
strives to stay alive. So Melville
includes us all in Ishmael’s fortunes by the simplest, strongest empathy.
Second, Ishmael seeks shelter:
“Yes, these eyes are windows, and
this body of mine is the house. What a
pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a
little lint here and there.”
Human waywardness and suffering
(Melville’s clearest influences, it seems to me, are Dante and Shakespeare)
pervade this novel. If the body is a
house, the ship is too, and a poorly founded one. Ahab himself, five hundred pages from now,
will confess to Starbuck, “I am all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky
casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship…” The novel fixates on this leakiness, wadding
pages to plug the hole. And it takes at
least this many to appreciate the damp condition of things. Our
human body is a leaky house.
If we do not yet see the intense
gravity of this assertion, we can at least relate to it. The not-Isaac, one of the crowd, desires the
sea, for the sea signals a search for home.
Ishmael’s search responds to three things: the cold, the darkness, his
poverty. All center in his body. Melville writes intimately, sketching his
portrait of humanity in a single face—a solitary, individual human person to
whom the whole race familiarly responds.
(Incidentally, here the novel becomes distinctly American, and American
fiction becomes distinctly applicable.)
We are cold, being alone. We are
dark, making mistakes. We are poor,
having at the last only ourselves.
The human body seems insufficient. Ishmael at last houses himself with a man
named Coffin. His search leads to the
grave. Yet, woven in the bleakness of
his beginning, Melville’s robust humor glints like strands of golden
thread. He closes with a mild pun:
“But no more blubbering now, we are
going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come.”
It is Melville’s deepest secret, one he keeps to himself for
a time, making us smile through pages of gloom, until we find at last glimmers
of the deepest joy.
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