Person-labeling is dangerous. Its seduction, however, in making easy categorizations of people so we can wrap our heads around them, make them easier to remember, has made it a fixture in human social life. How many times have you been asked, or asked, after brief introduction to a fellow Vassar student, the noxious, oppressive “what’s your major?” or “where do you live?”\u00a0Certainly I have done so, if only\u00a0as\u00a0a feeble attempt to advance conversation rather than any genuine interest in, say,\u00a0where someone lives. But then again, who should\u00a0care? Perhaps I should grant\u00a0you more benefit of the doubt, but I nonetheless maintain that it is largely\u00a0a substanceless question, at least partially designed to fit that given person into your mental person-labeling chart. Worse is the “major” question. It allows you to “know” something about that person: “Oh, she’s a philosophy major. She likes big questions and, unless she goes to law school, may flounder in the professional circuit, having to deal with real, practical questions with which her knowledge of abstract concepts cannot help her.\u201d\u00a0 However right or wrong those immediate conclusions are is beside the point, and I hope you get mine.<\/p>\n
So when Professor Friedman commented that Melville takes on his society\u2019s propensity for qualitative categorization based on physical attributes (see any of Ishmael\u2019s initial descriptions of anyone), I was eager to find a really good example in which a given character does not conform to his stereotype. My favorite one thus far \u00a0is from the beginning of Chapter 108, \u201cQueequeg in His Coffin,\u201d when Ishmael describes Queequeg as very sick:<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as all else in him thinned, and his cheekbones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of luster; and mildly but deeply looked at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die.\u201d (Signet, 460)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Queequeg might be labeled as a pagan, a tattooed freak, an incoherent, babbling brute, and a cannibal, all reinforcing his stereotype as a savage, but his penetrating, warm, affirming eyes transcend simple categorization, declaring his individuality. He is not merely a savage; he is Queequeg!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Person-labeling is dangerous. Its seduction, however, in making easy categorizations of people so we can wrap our heads around them, make them easier to remember, has made it a fixture in human social life. How many times have you been asked, or asked, after brief introduction to a fellow Vassar student, the noxious, oppressive “what’s […]<\/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-719","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\/719","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=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}