For class on Thursday, October 30th, I dressed up as Queequeg at the beginning of Moby Dick. He is presented to us, in his and Ishmael’s first endeavors outside the Spouter-Inn, in a long coat, slacks, and a Beaver skin top hat. While I could only assume the attire he wore underneath (most sailors portrayed in media are placed in plain white button-up dress shirts), I decided to include a rope to my costume, ties around my belt loops, to incorporate the passage on Ishmael and Queeuqeg’s wedding by the anchoring of the rope they share on the Pequod while Queequeg assists in skinning the whale. While not very noticeable (since I wear these rings quite often to class), I assigned specific passages/meanings to the designs of each of my rings. 1) A coffin, symbolizing the crew’s imminent and constant threat of death, and the foreshadowing of the shipwreck of the Pequod at the end of the novel, 2) a skull, referencing chapter 80 – The Nut, and Ishmael’s rant about the phrenology and craniology of the Sperm Whale, 3) a sun, made of bronze, gold, and silver, referencing the numerous times Melville uses terrestrial language and points out the use of light in representation of the feature of the whale and whiteness, and 4) a ring I received from my eldest brother’s grandmother containing different parts of an Abalone shell. Another piece of jewelry I used to reference the book was my cross earing (I know, I wear it all the time and hardly switch it for something different), which I used to represent Queequeg’s desire to learn from Christians for the betterment of his people and himself, and later his repulsion of the behavior of so called Christians, and rebuttal for them to learn from cannibals instead.