Tag Archives: chapter 13-27

Suspicions…

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I may be overanalyzing, but if the book’s reputation holds any weight, perhaps the fact Peleg was suspicious of Ishmael on page 79 was because pirates would use the “merchant” excuse often. Captain Peleg said, “…what makes thee want to go a whaling, eg?–it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh?–Hast not been a pirate, hast thou?–Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?–Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?” This might be foreshadowing a pirate attack, but it might also be a genuine concern at the time. Alternatively, anyone without whaling experience or from outside the local area would naturally arouse suspicion and would be excluded from the crew. This piece of dialogue reflects on the themes of danger and trust, as discord may be sown mid-journey.

Captain Ahab through Captain Peleg and Bildad’s perspectives.

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The reason why Ishmael was full of thoughts about Captain Ahab was because the mysteriousness oozing off of Captain Ahab attracts him. At the end of chapter 16, Ishmael was thinking about Captain Ahab after listening to the perspective of his other captains. He thought: “As I walked away…what had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain vagueness and painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the same time, I felt sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him, but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it…Though I felt impatience at what seemed like a mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then.” (Melville 89). This feeling that Ishmael is having is probably not the first time he has ever felt because he had the same curiosity towards Queequeg, and it attracts him to it. In this case, the mysteriousness and vagueness that Captain Ahab gives spike Ishmael’s curiosity. We all know that for the first couple of chapters, Ishmael was keenly reading the room, the background, and its people. Everything that he read, he analyzed to the fullest. I believe that Melville purposefully locked us in Ishmael’s perspective mainly because Melville also wants us to read people’s movements, but through Ishmael. It almost felt like we were Ishmael himself trying to figure out everything that we encountered. The reason why Ishamel was attracted to Captain Ahab’s mysteriousness was because he had not seen Captain Ahab yet and was listening to other captains’ perspectives. Ishmael felt sympathy, sorrow, and awe for Captain Ahab, but at the same time, he was not sure about it, which tells us readers that he does not hand-on know who Captain Ahab really is, and therefore, Ishmael’s thoughts and feelings were not a hundred percent accurate. This is why Ishamel’s thoughts head in different directions while he kept thinking about Captain Ahab. In a way, I really like how we are forced to read people through Ishmael’s perspective because we are also attracted by it, and it makes us ponder the possibilities that this novel offers, and it prompts us to read more about it. Such a fascinating way to write a novel.