Moby Dick Question
Why does Ishmael choose to go on a whaling trip as his way of being at sea? Why choose such a dangerous endeavor? What does this tell us about him as a character?
Why does Ishmael choose to go on a whaling trip as his way of being at sea? Why choose such a dangerous endeavor? What does this tell us about him as a character?
I think Ishmael chooses to go whaling because not only does he feel the need to escape, but he also feels the need to find a way to also doing something exciting. He opens up the story very blandly and is not very excited with his life and he has no money. By whaling, he gets his escape to the sea and the excitement that comes with it.
The decision to go whaling is Ishmael’s greatest achievement! I think that life lived otherwise would have kept him on Manhattan, disengaged and frustrated; now he has no choice but to ‘go awhaling!’ Nothing like forcing yourself into a sea of change, quite literally!
I believe that the fact that Ishmael is on this voyage shows us that Ishmael is not just hunting a whale or in this for the money or whaling experience. As stated in the beginning of the book Ishmael is clearly lacking a solid understanding of who he is as a person. I believe that while the rest of the crew is hunting sperm whales or moby dick, Ishmael is hunting himself and trying to locate the raw uninfluenced identity he was lacking.
I think that Ishmael has nothing on land preventing him from going on a
dangerous journey. He seems to have no emotional or physical attachments and
this emptiness allows him to go on the voyage.