Discussion Questions

QUESTION ONE

What does the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg signify? 

Ishmael describes it at various stages of development:

I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. (56) 

He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married. (56) 

Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg, a cosy, loving pair. (57)

To what extent is their relationship sexual?

QUESTION TWO

Ishmael, who begins frightened by the mere thought of "savages," soon engages in pagan worship alongside Queequeg. He reveal the thought process that drives his transformation:

But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow many to do to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. (57)

Does he really shift that easily? What other factors lead to his acceptance—and embracement—of idolatry?

QUESTION THREE

“With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls, his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales” (66).

Does the sea serve as an escape? Is one able to truly escape from tumultuous times?