Moby Dick Summary and Analysis

Chapter 1 Summary

The novel opens with the famous line, “Call me Ishmael.” A sailor, Ishmael describes a typical scene in New York City, with men gathering on their days off to contemplate the ocean and dream of a life at sea. Ishmael has no fortunes, and with nothing holding him back onto land, he decides to find his fortunes at sea. His yearning for the sea is nothing new; it is something that he chooses to do every time there is a “damp, drizzly November in [his] soul,” a feeling that might be common for most men who long for an adventure. Avoiding anything very “respectable,” he prefers to travel as a sailor than a common passenger. He had been on the sea earlier too, traveling on merchant ships, but this time he decides to sign on board a whaling ship, attributing his decision to three reasons: the inexplicable hand of the Fates, his curiosity about a creature so “portentous and mysterious” as the whale, and his love of adventure—his desire to “sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.”

Chapter 1 Analysis

The opening line of Moby Dick—“Call me Ishmael”—is one of the greatest lines of American literature. The biblical Ishmael was disinherited and sent away from his home in favor of his half-brother Isaac. The narrator’s name suggests that Ishmael is probably an outcast, a drifter, with no strong personal attachments. He confirms this suggestion when he states that he prefers not to travel as a passenger as passengers rely on others on the ship, or become seasick and ill. Worse, passengers have to pay for their passage whereas a sailor gets paid to be onboard a ship. He doesn’t seek any special rank—captain or cook—on the ship because he abhors “all honorable, respectable toils,” which indicates his disregard for social conventions. The first chapter sets a strong first-person narrative voice, and the reader can expect that this will be Ishmael’s story as well as Moby Dick’s or Ahab’s or anyone else’s. Important to note here is that the narrator is Ishmael, and not Melville.