One passage I want to examine from the reading this week is at the end of Chapter 10. Melville writes: “How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is this worship? Thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth–pagans and all included–can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood?”

I initially found interest in this passage because of the switch to third person–the narrator speaks to himself, Ishmael, perhaps as a way of dissociating from the situation at hand or separating himself from it. However, after writing this quote out, I am now seeing the use of ‘wood’ and ‘worship’ with Queepueg. What I find interesting in this sexually charged paragraph is the use of a religious idol to represent this relationship. Ishamel, or whoever the narrator is, feels as if he is betraying his identity as a Christian (his identity as a heterosexual?), and feels worshipping a false idol is wrong. Yet he justifies this worship of another idol, saying “could possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood?”. With this and his switch to the third person, he pulls himself away from the moral qualm faced and makes his actions seem small in comparison to all of the world, as if he can tuck himself away from God. Ishamel continues on this need to justify: “But what is worship?–to do the will of God–that is worship. And what is the will of God?–to do my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me–that is the will of God.” This continuous internal dialogue drives a point of obsession, almost in an OCD way as Ishmael continues to justify his actions. I think we can also look at this in a different lens, in one of interpretation and translation. How we choose to understand something, whether religious text, foreign languages, or even Moby Dick is this subjective experience influenced by so many different things. Ishmael here is choosing to interpret God’s will in a way that serves himself. This is not necessarily right or wrong and I have no opinion either way, besides that it is to serve his current situation. This is something we all do, not in a religious sense, but to push through life, there has to be a justification for the things we do that we may find moral qualm with.