***DISCLAIMER*** Regardless of the final grade, this essay has been a joy to write and a challenge in exploring close reading, self-reflection, and self-identity. Thanks for the opportunity.
In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, no chapter is as controversial or divisive as Chapter 10, “A Bosom Friend,” which explores the budding friendship between the two main characters, Ishmael and Queequeg. Many scholars have dubbed this one of the first American novels of the 1800s to depict an intimate queer relationship, while others regard it as just a close friendship between two men from very different paths, looking past their cultural and religious differences. There’s obviously no right or wrong answer, with substantial supporting evidence for both arguments. I’ve reread Chapter 10 numerous times, along with Chapter 11, Nightgown, which, as one would say, is the icing on the cake of what is unarguably a queer love between two men from entirely different backgrounds, both religiously, culturally, and racially. Melville offers us only a glimpse into this complex relationship, deliberately examining his own history and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, and noting that the time of publication (1851) was a stark period when things were better left unsaid. But it’s the way Melville writes these chapters, meticulously and purposefully, that invites readers to interpret them as they wish. The language employed in this chapter frames it more as a crush, a budding romance, or an impossible love ahead of its time.
In the first few paragraphs of Chapter 10, we see Queequeg worshiping his idol after returning from the chapel of a religion not his own, and, curiously and excitingly, counting the pages of a book, which he can only count up to fifty before restarting at one. We are shown this visual through the eyes of Ishmael, who is awed by the precarious human action and facial expressions, notes that while looking at him, “You cannot hide the soul.” (Melville, 55) We see Ishmael go from awe and curiosity to admiration and inspiration, stating that “… there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.” This line has no clear meaning, but in this context, I see it as someone so confident, bold, unafraid, and defiant in who they are, regardless of negative consequences, and who exists entirely as they see fit. At this time, we see many people living authentically and unapologetically in their own skin, particularly queer people of color. This is the moment when Ishmael begins to develop affection for a person he had once thought was a lunatic cannibal, someone whom he can put on a pedestal and idolize in a way he has never shown before. “Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.” (Melville, 56)
In conducting my scholarly research on the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, I found that many of the same close-reading analytical examples were used to argue that these two characters had a queer romantic relationship. Exhibit A “and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; (Melville, 57) or exhibit B “Thus, then in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and queequeg- a cosy loving pair.” (Melville 57) and lastly exhibit C in which Holly Mauer from the University of British Columbia writes, “The two routinely sleep together, and Chapter 4 opens with Ishmael reporting that he wakes up in the morning to ‘Queequeg’s arm thrown over [him] … in the most affectionate manner.” (Maurer) This is a common example used to argue for the intimacy between these two characters, and it is justified. This is not me throwing shade at Maurer, because it does enhance her argument that Melville’s writing is dedicated to Melville and that all his writing possesses some queer characteristics, but what strikes me is how the same line is used again in Chapter 10, page 56. The preceding lines most strongly catch my attention. “I thought this indifference of his [affectionate arm] very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times, you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom.” (Melville, 56) This leads back to my last paragraph where not only was Queequeg compared to George Washington, but now that of Socrates. Ishmael is now crushing hard on his newfound “bosom friend” where Ishmael is attracted to the person that Quuequeg is his “simple honest heart” regardless of sex or gender, but it’s what Ishmael says at this beginning of this phrase that deserves some close reading. “But savages are strange beings.” By stating this first, the reader is reminded that Queequeg is of an entirely different species, just with human characteristics, and this is where the issue of race, culture, religion, and love rears its ugly head.
In Emma Rantatlo’s MA thesis on the relationship of Queequeg and Ishmael in Moby Dick, she states, “I suggest further that interraciality is the definite thing that made the relationship possible in the first place; Ishmael can marry ‘a cannibal’ because a cannibal is able to elude the social boundaries of the mid-nineteenth-century United States. A cannibal does not live according to New England standards, but to cannibal standards, and when it comes to the ‘weird’ inhabitants of Polynesia, everything, even a same-sex marriage, is possible and even acceptable. I suggest that race in Moby-Dick is a paradox that both allows homosexuality and, at the same time, makes it impossible.” (Rantatlo 3) As I read this, my jaw dropped. It makes perfect sense that these characters are in a queer relationship, because it aligns with the history of this being written that something so outlandish and unheard could be seen as merely a work of fantasy literature. A moment that could be comparable to a knight slaying a fire-breathing dragon, because in this moment, something of this nature couldn’t exist, let alone be barely thought of. Ishmael is remarkably open-minded and tolerant for a man in the early 19th century. Indeed, after he finally works up the courage to start chatting with Queequeg and they share a smoke, get hitched, and go back to their room, Ishmael has no problem literally worshiping an idol with his best pal. “The Scholars’ refusal to read their relationship as romantic would make sense if Queequeg indeed was a noble savage stereotype […] Queequeg, when examining more closely, seems to dodge the stereotypes of typical Noble Savage imagery, and his character does not seem to exist as a realiser of sexual fantasy, either. Queequeg is written as his own man, with his own motives and agendas. Therefore, his relationship to Ishmael, a person who is willing to distance himself from his own culture* (See Chapter 10, page 58, paragraph 2) in order to feel close to a Stranger, seems to be of his own design, as much his own choice as Ishmael’s. (Rantatlo, 64) Mellville is breaking all the rules… literary, religiously, and morally, when it comes to what is tolerable and acceptable for a man in the 19th century. Still, it’s what is said in Chapter 11 that grounds this fantasy of “love is love,” and it’s that the natural state of man is to be in darkness.
Chapter 11 is titled Nightgown, in which the Oxford language definition of Nightgown is described as a light, loose garment worn to bed by a woman. This is the only chapter in the span of Moby Dick that carries a womanly role, which is something that is rarely seen at all in Moby Dick: Women. If the previous chapter held some female characteristics, this one here undeniably succeeds. Once inside the bed together, these two characters share an intimate moment that is described in such a way that only Melville could describe it. “We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.” (Melville, 59) This passage here is the most romantic passage that supports these two characters’ love for one another. The blanket (or the symbol for the nightgown) they’re both under allows both Ishmael and Queequeg to feel vulnerable, happy and safe, by describing this harsh cold that has been granted to you from the outside world and for a moment, to share bodily warmth, to relieve you from the pain of the outside cold, becomes a sacred and blissful moment where in something that is done in private, can be shared with another individual with zero judgement, but a pure feeling of acceptance and happiness. This is more than just a queer romance; it’s about the human heart.
This joyous occasion is ripped away instantly when the reader continues onto the next paragraph, “for when between sheets […] I have a way keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.” (Melville, 60) Ishamel realizes that in this moment, it could never exist outside this “nightgown”. By closing one’s eyes and allowing imagination and innocence to take over in the dark, is one truly able to be who they are, even though their life would benefit more if seen in the light? This passage here is a coming-out story waiting and wanting to be told. “Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness […] I experienced a disagreeable revulsion” (Melville, 60)
Ishmael and Queequeg, being queer lovers, are just a small fragment of life given to them by their creator, Herman Melville. There’s factual evidence to support the close and significant relationship between Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne( he even dedicated the book to the guy); it’s hard not to see Melville writing some of his personal life into these characters, allowing an expression that could only be freely seen when one’s eyes are shut. The love story of these two characters would never have been visible in the mid-nineteenth century, but as time moved forward, so did the legacy and the interpretation of the greatest American novel. So, Mr. Melville, won’t you be my neighbor? (A bosom friend)
Works Cited:
Maurer, Holly. “Queering Melville.” Arts One Student Journal, University of British Columbia, https://artsone.arts.ubc.ca/student-journal/queering-melville/.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Harper & Brothers, 1851.
Rantatlo, Emma. “Interracial and Queer Relationships in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.” MA thesis, University of Turku, 2018. https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/146370/ENG_MA_Rantatalo.pdf