Moby Dick

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.