In chapters ten through eleven of Moby Dick, Ishmael and Queequeg start becoming best friends. It’s funny because in chapter three when Ishmael first found out about Queequeg, he spent an entire chapter ranting about how scared he was of who this person was “going to be” and just worrying himself sick about the fact that he had to share a bed with a complete stranger. Ishmael first thinks Queequeg is a savage and shouldn’t be trusted, but in chapters ten and twelve you see Ishmael warm up to Queequeg, and rather, fall in love with him. After Ishmael sees Queequeg trying to count, he sees this vulnerable side of him, so Ishmael helps him. And by the time you know it, they are snuggled in bed together at twelve midnight, sharing a pipe. When Ishmael says “…there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends.” it reminded me of slumber parties with my best friends and staying up into the wee hours of the night, pouring our souls out to one another. This touched me as sweet, to hear this coming from two men, who are usually supposed to be too “tough” for something like that. Ishmael and Queequeg are a funny pair, and it also puzzles me at their closeness (because after all, it is not very manly) but I think they are charming and balance each other out very well.
Chapter twelve made me laugh out loud they way Ishmael (or Melville) ended chapter elven and started chapter twelve out like this: “I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words…” and goes on to say something like, but I managed to pull out a “skeleton” of the story of where Queequeg comes from, and it goes straight into the chapter titled “Biographical”. I think this was very clever and funny of Melville to make a whole chapter or “story” out of what Queequeg was telling him that night, right after he says they were talking. It shows how Melville kind of just goes with the flow of what he’s writing and how much he just makes things up, like the island, “Kokovoko”, that Queequeg comes from. Melville’s explanation for this “island” is “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Chapters thirteen and fourteen are about Ishmael and Queequeg deciding to go on a boat to Nantucket together. The way Melville describes Nantucket, kind of as the center of the world, was interesting for me to read compared to my personal image of Nantucket, going there as a little girl, a quaint, picture-perfect island with cobble stone streets and rose covered cottages, for “the vacationers”. The “Black Dog” Nantucket today has been sanitized of it’s “piratey” past, because reading all of this was quite a surprise to me.
I loved chapter fifteen. I am in love with Nantucket clam chowder. And apparently everyone back then was too.
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