Queequeg's Coffin
There are a thousands different ways for a man to lose himself and his soul - and a number of ways for him to be saved. Herman Melville presents us over the course of his work with a dozen different ways in which men find and lose and sometimes find themselves again. For Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, the way to life and to perhaps even hope is by death, or at least by an emblem of death, for it is by a coffin that he is - to steal a Dickensian phrase - recalled to life.
The first line of the novel is, of course, one of the best-known opening lines in English literature - but it is also a clue to the character of the narrator as well as a clue to the intent of Melville in writing this book. We are meant, as soon as we are asked in such an intimate way, to call this narrator by his more famous namesake. The journey that this Ishmael takes is not exactly like that of his Biblical counterpart, but it is in many ways the same for both men can only be saved when they recognize that they cannot save themselves.
Ishmael literally means "God Hears." Applying this reference of Ishmael to the novel, we can see that when the sailor Ishmael cried for help from the maddening quest of Ahab, God did hear him and provided him with an escape in the end through Queequeg's coffin. The crew of the Pequod found death in following their captain to the end, however, Ishmael was heard by God, and saved. Ishmael's survival produced, essentially, Ishmael the narrator who, in speculation, is alone left to tell the tale of the Pequod's adventure. Thus, the birth of Ishmael the narrator, an 'orphan', to tell us the tale of Captain Ahab and the wretched Pequod (http://westerncanon.com/cgibin/lecture/HermanMelvillehall/cas/15.html).
Melville is preoccupied in his work with the idea that each person (or eachman at least, for women are strikingly absent from Melville's tales)...
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Additionally, the holy ritual of anointing the selected things for God's intentions is discussed as well in Moby Dick -- where Queequeg come to a decision that the whaling ship must be anointed and as a result, he alone come to a decision to anoint the ship which permits Queequeg the sacred right of personal participation in the anointing procedure, something usually referred to a religious person; Queequeg did not
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