Moby Dick Pod

"But this is not the half; look again." Ishmael extolls the virtues of the whaling profession, whalers, and the wonders of far off places. 

On our first weekend wrap up, I'll be talking about our weird, sometimes relatable narrator Ishmael. What do we know about this guy? Who is he? Why is he?

"Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs." Ishmael is the ship, the ship is Ishmael.  

"I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity."  Peleg and Bildad wish the crew a farewell like worried parents. And we've finally set sail...!  

"It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf." Ishmael and Queequeg are accosted by Elijah again and eventually go on board the Pequod. They sit on a man.  

"If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea." Ishmael quantifies all the preparations for making The Pequod sea-worthy. 

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning." Some old sailor on the street starts ranting about Ahab and gives Ishmael the heebie-jeebies. 

"Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish." Ishmael and Queequeg go to The Pequod and Bildad and Peleg give Queequeg a hard time for not being Christian. Queequeg then demonstrates his badass-ery by throwing a harpoon and suddenly they don't give AF. 

"Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling." Ishmael returns to the inn and freaks out because he's neurotic. After telling everyone in the inn that Queequeg has had a stroke, he breaks down the door and Queequeg is fine. He then gives Queequeg a freakin lecture about how religion is bad. In bed.  

"Aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see." Ishmael signs with a ship named The Pequod.  He asks about the spooky captain. 

"A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows!" This episode is about exactly what you think it's about. 

"For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires..." Ishmael talks about Nantucket. 

"That common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records." Ishmael and Queequeg leave the Spouter Inn and exchange stories. They catch the a small boat to Nantucket and after a sailing mishap Queequeg saves a man's life. Like a boss. 

"It is not down in any map; true places never are." Queequeg tells Ishmael how he came to be a whaler and both promise to stick together and get on the same ship together out of Nantucket.  

"Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal." Ishmael talks about being cozy. Queequeg begins to tell the history of his island. 

"No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world." Ishmael and Queequeg beome besties. 

"In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers." Ishmael takes in Father Mapple's Sermon about Jonah, sin and salvation. 

"Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom." Ishmael takes in the church and the minister there and cannot help but see how whaling is incorporated into every aspect of New Bedford life. 

"But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope." Ishmael wanders into a chapel and sees the memorials of sailors long dead and gone. Thinking of the living and the dead, he falls into a melancholy and a happiness at his future on a whale boat. 

"Still New Bedford is a queer place." Ishmael tells of the strange people of New Bedford, a cross roads of the world. A rest stop of the high seas. 

Who am I? Who do I think I am? What's the big idea?  I can explain.  

"A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing." Ishmael goes to breakfast and is fascinated by the sailors, oddly quiet. He's keeping a curious eye focused on Queegqueg.

" But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition state—neither caterpillar nor butterfly." Ishmael wakes up and tells of a strange dream. Queequeg gets dressed. 

"When it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply." A very nervous Ishmael secures lodging but has to share a bed with a stranger. Chaos ensues. 

"My mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me." Ishmael arrives in New Bedford. It's late and cold. With little money he scours the dreary town for a place to stay for the night.