{"id":281,"date":"2010-01-31T18:48:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T22:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=281"},"modified":"2010-01-31T18:48:05","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T22:48:05","slug":"invisible-ishmael","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=281","title":{"rendered":"Invisible Ishmael"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first line of Moby Dick<\/em> draws the reader close into the mind of the narrator, with his command, \u201ccall me Ishmael,\u201d (Melville,\u00a0 For the first 21 chapters, and presumably the whole text, we see the word through the eyes of the enigmatic Ishmael.\u00a0 We know his thoughts, feelings, and deepest opinions.\u00a0 However, he himself is invisible.\u00a0 We see what he sees, but have no way to look at him as a character.\u00a0 Melville forces us to piece together the central figure of the book through his feelings, opinions, and subtle allusions to his past.<\/p>\n

In the first chapter, Ishmael explains why he goes to sea, and why he will never go as a passenger; he has no money and he enjoys the freedom of the forecastle deck.\u00a0 He acknowledges that, as a common sailor,<\/p>\n

they rather order me about some…and at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough.\u00a0 It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselars, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes.\u00a0 And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tarpot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster…the transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor. (Melville, 4)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ishmael speaks in the third person, but he clearly speaks of himself .\u00a0 We have a glimpse of his past as a blue-blooded, well educated, and powerful individual.\u00a0 This, of course, makes the reader wonder what happened to turn Ishmael from the son of some wealthy house to a penniless sailor.\u00a0 The answer seems to lie in Melville’s own life.\u00a0 Melville was born to an important New York Dutch family, well-educated, and spent several years teaching school before signing on as a deck hand to sail to Liverpool.\u00a0 Ishmael is clearly modelled on his creator, Herman Melville.\u00a0 The author seems to be purposefully obscuring the face of Ishmael so that we might not notice it is actually him.<\/p>\n

There may be an additional reason for Ishmael’s obscurity.\u00a0 It allows the reader to put a bit of himself into the character.\u00a0 Perhaps this is one of the reason this book rings so true for so many.\u00a0 Through Ishmael, the reader can get into this world, know the characters, and experience the same adventures and change of hearts as the elusive narrator.\u00a0 We cannot hold a mirror up to him to see what he looks like, allowing us to use him as a window instead.<\/p>\n

(New York: Signet Classic, 1998)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first line of Moby Dick draws the reader close into the mind of the narrator, with his command, \u201ccall me Ishmael,\u201d (Melville,\u00a0 For the first 21 chapters, and presumably the whole text, we see the word through the eyes of the enigmatic Ishmael.\u00a0 We know his thoughts, feelings, and deepest opinions.\u00a0 However, he himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}