Moby Dick, the magnum opus of Herman Melville, is the story of Ishmael; a depressed man longing for the sea and to sail, and of his desire to go whaling. On his journey to New Bedford and eventually to Nantucket “as [Nantucket] being the most promising port,for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.”(50), he, through limited bed space, encounters Queequeg, a cannibal prince from a remote island in the pacific who, “was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians”(50), but upon his journey on a whaling vessel finds“that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens”(50); finding that “Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. …show more content…
he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again”(50). Ishmael, at first fears Queequeg, but as Ishmael begins to understand him there grows a deep bond of friendship; as Ishmael says: “For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me...the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.” (48). With this new-found friendship they go together to Nantucket and join the Pequod, the whaling ship of Captain Ahab, a later unveiled one-legged man crippled by his monomaniacal obsession Moby Dick. Ishmael then speaks on the rest of the crew: Starbuck the first mate, a religious and cautious man, second mate Stubb, a pipe smoking and cheerful man from cape-cod, and the third mate Flask, a short, stout, and fiery man; their harpooners Queequeg, Tashtego, a pure-blooded Indian, and Daggoo, an African, respectively. From here Ahab’s quest to kill the “the white whale”, begins to overtake the crew and eventually leads all, but Ishmael, to their