Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Moby Dick by Herman Melville is called a "masterpiece," and I can understand why. Melville has created an exciting story that at the same time allows him to express his metaphysical ideas about the nature and relationship of God to man. He plumbs the psychological depths of his characters too. Throughout the book, there are many references to the Bible and the Christian perspective. I couldn't help thinking about my own ideas and my own relationship to God as I read Moby Dick.

The character of Ishmael is pious. He has a sense of humility, too. He doesn't see himself as superior or lordly. Not only that, but Ishmael is as tolerant as a modern-day multi-culturalist. Teachers today try to teach multicultural principles to kids in school. Kids learn there are other cultures -- and people in them think they are just as "right" as we think we are in our manners, customs, and values. With multi-cultural training, students can learn to accept people who look different and follow different customs. Ishmael already know this naturally. And he doesn't just "talk the talk," he "walks the walk." For example, when Ishmael is confronted with a tattooed cannibal named Queequeg who is selling shrunken heads that he brought from the islands, Ishmael is wary at first. But he soon sees the good in Queequeg. "What's all this fuss I have been making about,' thought I to myself -- the man's 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" (p. 22).

This is a way of thinking about others I am sure God approves. Ishmael has looked for God's image and likeness and found it. "So God created man in his own image, in the mage of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1:27). It seems to me that's what we're all supposed to do -- look for the man God has created. The image and likeness of God isn't in the physical body but in the spiritual qualities the person expresses -- such as when Queequeg says to Ishmael, "You gettee in,' he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way'" (p. 22). Later, Ishmael observes, "Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face -- at least to my taste -- his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul... I saw the traces of a simple, honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. " (p. 45). Ishmael is a man who is able to look at "the deep things of God" and see the soul of man. He has developed spiritual sense.

Ishmael follows a line of Christian reasoning that allows him to unite with a "heathen," that is a person that knows nothing about the Christian religion. He reasons that to obey the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), he must do for Queequeg what he would want Queequeg to do to him. He would want Queequeg to "unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must unite with him in his" (p. 48). In a sense, he "visits" Queequeg's "church" by participating in Queequeg's form of worship. I find it admirable that he is able to set aside sectarian allegiance and connect in a real way with someone very different from himself. He has no ulterior motive for doing it -- he just wants to be friends.