I apologize for this post coming so late, but I wanted to look back at the first scenes in the novel in which Ishmael and Queequeg interact, in chapters 3 and 4. As other blog posts in this topic have already mentioned, the lack of female characters in Moby Dick leaves us readers with no choice but to closely examine the homosocial and pseudo-homosexual relationships that take place in the realm of Melville\u2019s imagination. The first communication between Ishmael and Queequeg is odd, amusing, and revealing.<\/p>\n
Ishmael admits being terrified of the tattooed cannibal but then acknowledges that his fear is unfounded and born out of ignorance: \u201cWhat\u2019s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself–the man\u2019s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian\u201d (22). Ishmael describes his night of sleep with the foreigner as the best of his life, but upon waking he discovers \u201cQueequeg\u2019s arm thrown over [him] in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought [he] had been his wife\u201d (22). But this \u201cpagan,\u201d tattooed arm is not any ordinary arm; Ishmael compares it to the patchwork quilt on the bed they share. (Perhaps irrelevant, but I couldn\u2019t help but think of Freudian discussions of fetishes in the early twentieth century.) Queequeg\u2019s gender role is confused by conflicting, contradictory character traits and habits \u2013 for instance, \u201cthe unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style\u201d (as if Ishmael is his wife) contrasts with his appearance, tattoos, snoring, grunting, harpoon shaving, etc.<\/p>\n
I believe Melville wrote this humorous exchange with the intent to make readers laugh. In fact the scene is hysterical in its awkwardness. Besides serving as a moment of a comedy in a largely dark, romantic novel, this scene might also be Melville\u2019s way of exploring \u201cthe Other.\u201d Ishmael the narrator seems to mimic Melville the author in many ways, and Ishmael\u2019s struggling to work through and understand the exotic foreigner\u2019s habits, customs, and intentions parallels Melville\u2019s struggling to accept and trust the foreigners of the Pacific and the Caribbean in his own travels. Ishmael is ignorant of Queequeg\u2019s background and thus these few pages in the novel serve as a cultural exploration: how might gender roles and expectations be different for Queequeg, an unknown and unpredictable force, than typical Americans in the nineteenth century? Queequeg is \u201coff\u201d in that he does not satisfy our culture\u2019s understanding of gender divisions, as is revealed in his loving clutch of Ishmael in bed. He walks the line between masculinity and femininity. This further sets him apart as an outsider and clarifies that he is very different from Ishmael and the other American-born and raised men on the Pequod who abide by typical gender roles. Queequeg is \u201cotherized\u201d even more greatly. On page 25, Ishmael uses two different metaphors to assert Queequeg\u2019s differentness and his transitioning into a person who fits more naturally and fluidly into normal society: \u201cBut Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage\u2014neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner. His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate\u201d (25).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I apologize for this post coming so late, but I wanted to look back at the first scenes in the novel in which Ishmael and Queequeg interact, in chapters 3 and 4. As other blog posts in this topic have already mentioned, the lack of female characters in Moby Dick leaves us readers with no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[4320],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","tag-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","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=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}