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Ishmael is a character in Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick (1851), which opens with the line "Call me Ishmael." He is the first-person narrator of much of the book. Because Ishmael plays a minor role in the plot, early critics of Moby-Dick assumed that Captain Ahab was the protagonist.
The Bible’s Ishmael is a wanderer dispossessed from his family, a situation which reflects the uprootedness the narrator feels at the beginning of the novel. While this attitude initially works to introduce a rather forlorn mood, it also alludes to Melville’s broader interests in the limits of knowledge and the power of interpretation.
Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails Melville’s purposes, and he disappears from the story for long stretches, replaced by dramatic dialogues and soliloquies from Ahab and other characters. A detailed description and in-depth analysis of Ishmael in Moby-Dick.
Nov 21, 2023 · Herman Melville introduces us to Ishmael in the first line of his novel, Moby-Dick. Ishmael is not described in much physical detail, but we learn that he is a former sailor, without family...
- Ishmael is perceptive and philosophical. As the narrator, he gives almost no information about his physical appearance or his backstory. He is a lo...
- The name Ishmael is a reference to one of Abraham's sons in the Bible. The name means "God hears." Both the biblical Ishmael and the novel's Ishmae...
- Initially, because he has been told his roommate is a cannibal, Ishmael fears the mysterious Queequeg. However, Ishmael learns to respect and trust...
ISHMAEL: TIME AND PERSONALITY IN MOBY-DICK CARL F. STRAUCH Recent criticism of Moby-Dick has directed attention to Ishmael as narrator, character, and consciousness. In The Long Encounter Merlin Bowen's remarks on Ishmael as a character important in the unfolding of his own tale cannot be improved upon for their justice.
According to tradition, Ishmael is the forefather of the Arab peoples, and Isaac is the forefather of the Jewish tribes. So basically the Biblical Ishmael is a figure in the wilderness, fated for banishment and separation from his earthly father.
The book is the sailor Ishmael 's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage.
