Ishmael (Moby-Dick)

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 the book. Because Ishmael plays a minor role in the plot, early critics of Moby-Dick assumed that Captain Ahab was the protagonist. Many either confused Ishmael with Melville or overlooked the role he played. Later critics distinguished Ishmael from Melville, and some saw his mystic and speculative consciousness as the novel's central force rather than Captain Ahab's monomaniacal force of will. The Biblical name Ishmael has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts. By contrast with his eponym from the Book of Genesis, who is banished into the desert, Melville's Ishmael wanders upon the sea. Each Ishmael, however, experiences a miraculous rescue; in the Bible from thirst, in the novel from drowning.