View source for Ishmael (Moby-Dick)

{{short description|Fictional character from the novel Moby-Dick}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ishmael (''Moby-Dick'')}}
{{Infobox character
| name               = Ishmael
| series             = [[Moby Dick]]
| image              = Moby_Dick_p91_illustration.jpg
| caption            = Ishmael (left) depicted in a 1920 edition of the book
| creator            = [[Herman Melville]]
| occupation         = Schoolmaster, sailor, oarsman, whaler
| gender             = Male
| nationality        = American
| family               = Unnamed stepmother<br>John D'Wolf (uncle)
| children           = At least one (implied)
}}

'''Ishmael''' is a character in [[Herman Melville]]'s ''[[Moby-Dick]]'' (1851), which opens with the line "Call me Ishmael." He is the [[First-person narrative|first-person narrator]] of much of the book. Because Ishmael plays a minor role in the plot, early critics of ''Moby-Dick'' assumed that [[Captain Ahab]] was the [[protagonist]]. Many either confused Ishmael with Melville or overlooked the role he played. Later critics distinguished Ishmael from Melville, and some saw his mystic and speculative consciousness as the novel's central force rather than Captain Ahab's [[monomania]]cal force of will.

The Biblical name [[Ishmael]] has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts. By contrast with his eponym from the [[Book of Genesis]], who is banished into the desert, Melville's Ishmael wanders upon the sea. Each Ishmael, however, experiences a miraculous rescue; in the Bible  from thirst, in the novel from drowning.

== Characteristics ==
Both [[Captain Ahab (Moby-Dick)|Ahab]] and Ishmael are fascinated by the whale, but whereas Ahab perceives him exclusively as evil, Ishmael keeps an open mind. Ahab has a static world view, blind to new information, but Ishmael's world view is constantly in flux as new insights and realizations occur. "And flux in turn ... is the chief characteristic of Ishmael himself."<ref>Sweeney (1975), 94</ref> In the chapter "The Doubloon", Ishmael reports how each spectator sees his own personality reflected in the coin, but does not look at it himself. Fourteen chapters later, in "The Gilder", he participates in "what is clearly a recapitulation" of the earlier chapter.<ref>Sweeney (1975), 93</ref> The difference is that the surface of the golden sea in "The Gilder" is alive, whereas the surface of the doubloon is unalterably fixed, "only one of several contrasts between Ishmael and Ahab."<ref>Sweeney (1975), 95</ref>

Ishmael meditates on a wide range of topics. In addition to explicitly philosophical references, in Chapter 89, for instance, he expounds on the legal concept, "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish", which he takes to mean that possession, rather than a moral claim, bestows the right of ownership.

== Biography ==
Ishmael, like Melville, first worked as a school teacher before securing a position on a merchant vessel. After several voyages in the merchant service, he decides to sail as a [[Green hand (whaling)|green hand]] on a [[whaler|whaling ship]], leaving from Nantucket.

Ishmael first travels from [[Manhattan Island]] to [[New Bedford, Massachusetts|New Bedford]]. The inn is crowded, and he must share a bed with the tattooed [[Polynesia]]n, [[Queequeg]], a harpooneer whom Ishmael assumes to be a cannibal. Two days later Ishmael and Queequeg head for [[Nantucket]]. Ishmael signs up for a voyage on the whaler ''[[Pequod (Moby-Dick)|Pequod]]'', under Captain Ahab. Ahab is obsessed by the white whale, Moby Dick, who on a previous voyage had severed his leg. In his quest for revenge Ahab has lost all sense of responsibility, and when the whale sinks the ship and destroys the whaleboats, all crewmembers drown with the exception of Ishmael: "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."{{efn|
''"Only I am escaped alone to tell thee"'' is a tagline repeated several times in the opening scenes of the ''[[Book of Job]]'', as Job's servants report the various calamaties that have befallen his family, household, and possessions. This quotation from Job is used as the epigraph of the final chapter of ''Moby-Dick''.}} A life buoy fashioned from Queequeg's coffin{{efn|
The coffin had previously been made by the ship's carpenter for Queequeg when the latter was suffering from a severe fever.
}}
bobs up to the surface, and Ishmael keeps himself afloat on it until another whaling ship, the ''Rachel'', arrives to rescue him.

==Family==
The only family Ishmael mentions include an unnamed stepmother and an uncle, Captain (John) D'Wolf. [[John DeWolf (sea captain)|John D'Wolf]], in reality, was Melville's uncle, having married his paternal aunt Mary. Ishmael, writing the narrative of the book as an older man, also implies in Chapter 35 that he's a father ("we fathers being the original inventors and patentees..."). 

==Ishmael (Old Testament)==
{{Main|Ishmael}}
The name [[Ishmael]] is [[Bible|Biblical]] in origin: in [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] 16:1-16; 17:18-25; 21:6-21; 25:9-17, Ishmael was the son of [[Abraham]] by [[Hagar (Bible)|Hagar]]. In 21:6-21, the most significant verses for Melville's allegory,<ref>Mansfield and Vincent (1952), 587</ref> Hagar was cast off after the birth of [[Isaac]], who inherited the covenant of the Lord instead of his older half-brother.

Melville shapes his allegory to the Biblical Ishmael as follows:
* Biblical Ishmael is banished to "the wilderness of Beer-sheba", while the narrator of ''Moby-Dick'' wanders, in his own words, in "the wilderness of waters."<ref name="Wright 1949, 48">Wright (1949), 48</ref> In the Bible, the desert or wilderness is a common setting for a vision of one kind or another.<ref>Wright (1949), 49</ref> By contrast, Melville's Ishmael takes to sea searching for insights.
* In Genesis, Hagar was visited by an angel who instructed her to call her still unborn child ''Yishma'el'', meaning "God shall hear". This prophecy was fulfilled when Ishmael, perishing in the desert, was saved by a miracle: the sudden appearance of a well of water.<ref name="Wright 1949, 48"/> In ''Moby-Dick'', only Ishmael escapes the sinking of the ''Pequod'', which is described as "that by a margin so narrow as to seem miraculous."<ref>Wright (1949), 50-51</ref>
*In direct translation from the Hebrew Bible about Ishmael: "His hand in all, and the hand of all in him."

The name further points to a Biblical analogy that marks Ishmael as the prototype of "wanderer and outcast",<ref>Wright (1949), 47</ref> the man set at odds with his fellows. [[Nathalia Wright]] says that all Melville's heroes—with the exception of Benito Cereno and Billy Budd—are manifestations of the Biblical Ishmael, and four are actually identified with him: Redburn, Ishmael, Pierre, and Pitch from ''[[The Confidence-Man]]''.<ref>Wright (1940), 187</ref>

==Critical views==
During the early decades of the [[Melville revival]], readers and critics often confused Ishmael with Melville, whose works were perceived as autobiography. The critic [[F.O. Matthiessen]] complained as early as 1941 that "most of the criticism of our past masters has been perfunctorily tacked onto biographies" and objected to the "modern fallacy" of the "direct reading of an author's personal life into his works."<ref>Matthiessen (1941), [https://books.google.com/books?id=tULy3pA-ZoQC&dq=%22most+of+the+criticism+of+our+past+masters+has+been+perfunctorily+tacked+onto+biographies%22&pg=PR11 xi-xii]</ref> In 1948 Howard P. Vincent, in his study ''The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick'', "warned against forgetting the narrator", that is, assuming that Ishmael was merely describing what he saw.<ref>Bezanson (1986), 183</ref> Robert Zoellner pointed out that Ishmael's role as narrator "breaks down" either when Ahab and Stubb "have a conversation off by themselves" in chapter 29 or else when Ishmael reports "the soliloquy of Ahab sitting alone" in chapter 37.<ref>Bezanson (1986), 184</ref>

Views also differ as to whether the protagonist is Ishmael or Ahab. [[M.H. Abrams]] finds Ishmael is "only a minor or peripheral" participant in the story he tells,<ref>Abrams (2011), [https://books.google.com/books?id=SUEtEa9nUWQC&q=Ishmael+Moby-Dick&pg=PA305 p. 303]</ref> but [[Walter Bezanson]] argues that the novel is not so much about Ahab or the White Whale as it is about Ishmael, who is "the real center of meaning and the defining force of the novel."<ref name="Bezanson 1953, 644">Bezanson (1953), 644</ref>

Bezanson argues that there are two Ishmaels. The first is the narrator, "the enfolding sensibility of the novel" and "the imagination through which all matters of the book pass." The reader is not told how long after the voyage Ishmael begins to tell his adventure, the second sentence's "some years ago" being the only clue. The "second Ishmael", continues Bezanson, is "forecastle Ishmael", or the "younger Ishmael of 'some years ago.'...  Narrator Ishmael is merely young Ishmael grown older." Forecastle Ishmael is "simply one of the characters in the novel, though, to be sure, a major one whose significance is possibly next to Ahab's."  From time to time there are shifts of tense to indicate that "while forecastle Ishmael is busy hunting whales, narrator Ishmael is sifting memory and imagination in search of the many meanings of the dark adventure he has experienced."<ref name="Bezanson 1953, 644">Bezanson (1953), 644</ref>

In a 1986 essay, Bezanson calls Ishmael an innocent "and not even particularly interesting except as the narrator, a mature and complex sensibility, examines his inner life from a distance, just as he examines the inner life of Ahab..."<ref name="Bezanson 1986, 185">Bezanson (1986), 185</ref>

John Bryant points out that as the novel progresses the central character is "flip-flopping from Ishmael to Ahab". The beginning of the book is "comedy" in which anxious Ishmael and serene Queequeg "bed down, get 'married,' and take off on a whaling adventure come-what-may." After Ahab enters in Ch. 29, Ishmael, who does not reappear until Ch. 41, is no longer the "central character", but the novel's "central consciousness and narrative voice". As his role as a character erodes, says Bryant, "his life as a lyrical, poetic meditator upon whales and whaling transforms the novel once again...." Ishmael  wrestles with the realization that he cannot follow Ahab to a fiery doom but must be content with "attainable felicity", (Ch. 94) but Ahab then takes over once more.<ref>Bryant (1998), pp. 67-68</ref>

Narrator-Ishmael demonstrates "an insatiable curiosity" and an "inexhaustible sense of wonder", says Bezanson,<ref>Bezanson (1953), 646 and 647</ref> but has not yet fully understood his adventures: "'It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.'"<ref>Cited in Bezanson (1953), 645</ref>  This Ishmael must not be equated with Melville himself: "we resist any one-to-one equation of Melville and Ishmael."<ref>Bezanson (1953), 647</ref> Bezanson does attribute characteristic Melvillean features to the narrator, who in the Epilogue, likens himself to "another [[Ixion]]".<ref name=Moby-Dick>{{cite book
|author=  Herman Melville
|title=  Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
|date=  1851
|publisher=  Harper & Brothers
|location=  New York
|chapter=  Epilogue
|chapter-url=  http://etcweb.princeton.edu/batke/moby/moby_zz.html
|access-date=  2014-06-05
|archive-date=  2018-07-27
|archive-url=  https://web.archive.org/web/20180727132011/http://etcweb.princeton.edu/batke/moby/moby_zz.html
|url-status=  dead
}}</ref>

Bezanson also insists that it would be a mistake "to think the narrator indifferent to how his tale is told." Earlier critics charged that Melville did not pay a great deal of attention to point of view, "and of course this is true" in [[Henry James]]'s sense of the technique, yet Ishmael-narrator's "struggle" with the shaping of his narrative, "under constant discussion, is itself one of the major themes of the book." Ishmael deploys among other genres and styles, a sermon, a dream, a comic set-piece, a midnight ballet, a meditation, an emblematic reading.<ref name="Bezanson 1986, 185"/>

== Actors who have played Ishmael ==
* [[Howard Duff]] in the 1948 NBC ''Favorite Story'' radio adaptation in which [[William Conrad]] portrayed Ahab.
* [[Richard Basehart]] in ''[[Moby Dick (1956 film)|Moby Dick]]'', a 1956 film adaptation in which [[Gregory Peck]] plays Ahab.
* [[Henry Thomas]] in ''[[Moby Dick (1998 miniseries)|Moby Dick]]'', a 1998 television miniseries adaptation in which [[Patrick Stewart]] plays Ahab.
* [[Tim Guinee]] in ''[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329992/ Animated Epics: Moby Dick]'', a 2000 animated movie in which [[Rod Steiger]] provides the voice of Ahab.
* [[Terry O'Neill (martial artist)|Terry O'Neill]] in ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)|The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', a 2003 film based on the [[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen|comic book of the same name]], as the first mate of [[Captain Nemo]].
* [[Jack Aranson]] (and 8 other characters) in a 2003 stage adaptation of the book.
* [[F. Murray Abraham]] in the 2006 three-part [[BBC Radio 4]] radio play.
* [[Renee O'Connor]] plays Michelle Herman, a female counterpart of Ishmael in ''[[Moby Dick (2010 film)|Moby Dick]]'', a 2010 modern-day film adaptation in which [[Barry Bostwick]] plays Ahab.
* [[Charlie Cox]] in ''[[Moby Dick (2011 miniseries)|Moby Dick]]'', a 2011 television miniseries adaptation in which [[William Hurt]] plays Ahab.
* [[Stephen Costello (Singer)|Stephen Costello]] plays Greenhorn, the renamed Ishmael character, in the 2010 [[Moby-Dick (opera)|opera version]] by [[Jake Heggie]].
* [[PJ Brennan]] as a young man in the 2010 two-part [[BBC Radio 4]] radio play.
* Manik Choksi in Dave Malloy's 2019 musical ''Moby Dick: A Musical Reckoning''.
* Jang Ye-na (장예나) as a female interpretation of Ishmael, working alongside other classic literary protagonists in the 2023 video game ''[[Limbus Company]]''.

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{reflist|25em}}

==References==
*{{cite book|first=M. H.|last=Abrams|author-link=M.H. Abrams|url=http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/ref/abrams_mh.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160527182311/http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/ref/abrams_mh.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2016-05-27|title=A Glossary of Literary Terms|date=2011|publisher=[[Cengage Learning|Wadsworth Publishing]]|location=Boston, Massachusetts|isbn=978-0495898023}}
*{{cite book|first=Walter E.|last=Bezanson|author-link=Walter E. Bezanson|chapter=''Moby-Dick'': Work of Art|title=Moby-Dick, or the Whale|date=2002|editor1-first=Hershel|editor1-last=Parker|editor1-link=Hershel Parker|editor2-first=Harrison|editor2-last=Hayford|editor2-link=Harrison M. Hayford|publisher=[[W. W. Norton]]|location=New York City|isbn=9780393972832|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/mobydick00melv}}
*{{cite book|first=John|last=Bryant|chapter=''Moby-Dick'' as Revolution|editor-first=Robert S.|editor-last=Levine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L-KhKv9kNqkC|title=The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|location=Cambridge, England|date=1998|isbn=0-521-55571-X}}
*{{cite book|first1=Luther S.|last1=Mansfield|first2=Howard P.|last2=Vincent|chapter=Introduction", "Explanatory Notes|title=Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|date=1952|publisher=Hendricks House|location=New York City|asin=B000KT6EXS}}
*{{cite book|first=F. O.|last=Matthiessen|author-link=F. O. Matthiessen|title=American Renaissance. Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman|orig-year=1941|date=1968|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|location=Oxford, England|isbn=978-0195007596}}
*{{cite book|first1=Tom|last1=Quick|chapter=Explanatory Notes|title=Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|publisher=Penguin Books|location=New York City|orig-year=1851|date=1994|asin=B00BR5GVAK}}
*{{cite book|first=Gerard M.|last=Sweeney|title=Melville's Use of Classical Mythology|publisher=Brill Rodopi|location=Amsterdam, Netherlands|date=1975|isbn=978-9062032587|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/melvillesuseofcl0000swee}}
*{{cite book|first=Nathalia|last=Wright|title=Melville's Use of the Bible|publisher=[[Duke University Press]]|location=Durham, North Carolina|date=1969|isbn=978-0374987787}}

== External links ==
* [[s:Moby-Dick/Chapter 1|Moby-Dick Chapter 1: Loomings]] — First (numbered) chapter of ''Moby-Dick'', introducing Ishmael.
* [http://librivox.org/moby-dick-by-herman-melville/ Librivox: Moby Dick Audiobook] - Public Domain Audiobook

{{Moby-Dick}}

[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1851]]
[[Category:Characters in Moby-Dick]]
[[Category:Fictional sailors]]
[[Category:Fictional sole survivors]]
[[Category:Male characters in literature]]