Jan 31 2010
Melville’s Inclusion of Not Only Christianity
From the beginning, Herman Melville makes it clear that his novel Moby Dick has a great deal to do with religion, and in many cases, Christianity in particular. While he does dabble in including references to other religions, most of the references Melville makes, at least in this first portion of the novel, have to do directly with Christianity. Perhaps this reflects Melville’s own Calvinist upbringing, while also portraying his willingness to question and explore “other-ness”.
The first sentence of the novel, in fact, states simply “Call me Ishmael” (Melville, 1). This reference to a somewhat contentious character from the Bible is an interesting choice by Melville. Melville shows that the Bible is so significant to him that the narrator of his epic work refers to himself as a Biblical character, yet it is interesting that this character is not straight forwardly a “good” or a “bad” person in the Bible. Perhaps Melville is already adding dimension and character development by doing this, refusing to ever let the main character in his novel be simple.
Melville also references the Greek gods in Ishmael’s first tangential description of the power and draw of the sea, in which Ishmael questions, “Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?” (3). Ishmael is not only interested in his religion, but in the religions of the past, to the extant that his reference shows some knowledge of the Greek gods’ genealogy. Perhaps this shows an added element of interest placed by Melville in other religions, and a willingness to take them seriously.
Ishmael later shows the sentiment that being Christian is not the end all and be all of being a good person when he says, “Better sleep with a sober Cannibal than a drunken Christian” (24). This again shows Melville’s willingness to explore the validity of sentiments other than Christianity, to the extent that he will even consider people who are so uncivilized that they are referred to as cannibals as, in some situations, being better than Christians.
Melville makes it clear that religion is an important subject in this novel, and he does have quite a focus on Christianity and the importance of Christianity. However, he also shows that he is willing to explore and take seriously the idea that Christianity is not the only valid religion, or that Christians are always the best people.
2 Responses to “Melville’s Inclusion of Not Only Christianity”
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Katie, you are right to say that Melville is exploring Christianity in the novel among other religions, and that he is fascinated by Eastern religions and Greek polytheism as well — it will be interesting for you to keep notes on when he mentions other religions, and how he represents them.
For future posts, try to focus on one aspect of a passage, page, chapter, paragraph. It will be easier to write a focused post. This one is good, but a bit tangential, trying to cover a lot of ground. Melville’s novel is a novel of ideas, and it can be hard to pin one down, so try to stick closely to one part of the text.
I also noticed, kahoople, that Ishmael from the very beginning of the novel, is surprisingly open to other religious beliefs or lack thereof. When Ishmael first meets the “pagan” Queequeg, he is initially wary of getting close to him and is therefore distrustful of him. However, Ishmael seems to have qualms about his own Christian beliefs. You pointed out that Ishmael says that “[It is] Better [to] sleep with a sober Cannibal than a drunken Christian” (24). To me that clearly shows Ishmael’s willingness to risk his life by sleeping with a pagan Cannibal, rather than simply sleep with a harmless, albeit drunk, fellow Christian.