Praying with Queequeg: Western Christian Toleration in Moby-Dick

Abstract

Herman Melville did not adhere to Christian orthodoxy. If he was a Christian at all, he was a peculiar one. However, in his masterful work, which poetically rages against God and all creation, Moby-Dick, Melville offers a critique of American Christianity from which the “Christian West” can learn. He contrasts an uncommitted, milquetoast protestant, Ishmael, with an ardent, committed pagan, Queequeg. Their relationship draws Ishmael into idolatry, using Christian doctrine as justification. This parody of toleration qua cultural relativism demonstrates the problem of religious pluralism in the West.

1. Introduction: The Theological-Political Problem and Moby-Dick

Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that “men at first had no other kings than the gods, nor any other government than a theocratic one.”1 This ancient arrangement was not without controversy, as it brought about a competition of authority between the gods of the city, human lawmakers, and the claims of philosophy—what was later termed the theological–political problem. The best classical thinkers recognized these tensions. Sophocles’ Antigone typifies the question at issue between the gods and lawmakers, as the title character challenges the supremacy of the city’s laws (and thus its ruler) in the name of the traditional commands of the gods (Sophocles 2014). Plato’s Euthyphro presents the conflict between the gods and philosophy, with the archetypical philosopher Socrates succinctly asking whether the objects the gods love are worthy because the gods love them (ultimate authority resting with the gods) or if the gods love them because the things they love are themselves worthy (ultimate authority residing above and beyond the gods).2

In the height of the “Christian era” during the Middle Ages, the official marriage between church and state allowed some of the problems of the ancients to persist in a new form. The interaction between the Pope’s representative Pandulph and the Kings of both England and France in Shakespeare’s King John provides a wonderful presentation of this. First, John is chided and denounced by Rome for claiming authority over the selection of Bishops in the English Church. Rome then expressly requires France to make war on England. However, once John submits to Papal authority, France is unwilling to relent in its military ambitions against England.3 The question of who holds ultimate authority hardly ever leaves the stage in the play.

In response to the often-violent difficulties medieval political–religious arrangements gave rise to, Enlightenment thinkers proposed the concept of religious freedom. Although this created conditions in modernity not matching those seen in the ancient or medieval world, the theological–political question persisted under a new form. The question then became not only “how, if at all, shall the citizens serve the gods?” but also “which gods, if any, should the citizens serve?” and “can a regime survive if it permits or even welcomes the worship of many competing gods?” The religious toleration opening that final question—codified in the American Constitution’s First Amendment and altered by its application through time—holds that all may worship as they please, but the public square will remain neutral on religious questions. While this liberal disposition does not truly solve the theological–political problem but defers it, kicking the can down the road, no institutional answer to this perennial question not ending in a single-denomination state has ever held up so well for so long. Yet the unanswered questions of our modern theological–political situation remain with us, reasserting themselves potently amidst the conflicts attendant to religious diversity proliferating across the West.

Though America in the 19th century certainly had not experienced the degree of difficulty observable under religious pluralism in the 21st century,4 in the opening pages of his masterwork, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville parodies something approaching the conflict the Western world now faces. While Melville’s own perspective on the topic remains imperfectly clear, with obvious leanings in favor of liberalism and attendant liberalization of religion, his poetic vision produces something both poignant and prescient. Moby-Dick’s opening implicitly asks the theological–political question for modern America and the West and answers with an ambiguous analogy. In the novel, the question of a liberal regime’s survival under religious and cultural pluralism comes into sharp relief in the persons of Ishmael and Queequeg.5

To frame Moby-Dick’s presentation of religion in America, a discussion of the topic in the writings of democratic theorists Alexis de Tocqueville and John Rawls follows.

2. Tocqueville and Rawls on Religion

Among the many worthy accounts of the theological–political problem, Tocqueville and Rawls were selected in large part because they possess the unique feature of an apposite interest in contemporary democratic and liberal regimes in the West. In this, they display, more than most thinkers, contours of the post-Enlightenment theological–political problem in America.

Alexis de Tocqueville observes throughout Democracy in America the influence the spirit of democracy exercises over all things. Democracy so thoroughly imbues the lives of its adherents that nothing remains untouched by it. To this point, Tocqueville asserts on the question of religion, “One cannot deny that Christianity itself has in some fashion come under the influence exerted over religious beliefs by the social and political state.” (Tocqueville 2000, vol. 2, Pt. 1, chap. 5, p. 420). Democratized religion’s most visible change comes in its reaction to popular opinion. To a religion in a democratic nation “common opinion appears more and more as the first and most irresistible of powers. There is no support outside of it strong enough to permit long resistance to its blows.” (ibid., p. 423). As Lincoln said of statesmen, “A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded,”6 so Tocqueville asserts of religions in America. The clergy understands how thoroughly such opinion controls the nation; they thus “never support any but necessary struggles against it…they willingly adopt the general opinions of their country and time.” In doing so, democratic religions attempt to remain relevant, rather than cease to exist (ibid., pp. 423–24).

John Rawls, another democratic theorist, proposed a solution to some of the problems of pluralism. In Political Liberalism, Rawls asserts that in a liberal state, public reason, which is ineffable and unmeasurable, will determine what bounds should be set on society.7 Liberalism has, in Rawls’ reading, what he calls a “thin” concept of the good (Rawls 1971, pp. 395–98). This means that questions of ultimate purpose and truth are excluded for the sake of living comfortably together. Such questions are contained in thick concepts of the good, reserved for the autonomous decision of an individual on their peculiar life plan (ibid., pp. 407–16). To accomplish this universalized, thin good, ideas that run counter to the liberal mission are automatically and of necessity excluded through a concept called “reasonable overlapping consensus.”8 For example, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, or other religions are permitted under liberalism so long as none of their teachings run afoul of the liberal conception of the good, with its injunction toward tolerance and regime loyalty. If a Catholic too thoroughly values the Vatican, a Jew Israel, or a Muslim the Sharia law, then they pose a threat to liberal society. Such positions, therefore, must be rejected or the religion will wane in relevance and eventually cease to have any popular presence in the democratic nation. One practical example helps bring this into focus. In the recent past, many Christian denominations openly attacked the LGBT movement, particularly gay marriage. This was permissible (if not enthusiastically endorsed) under the overlapping consensus so long as public feeling did not openly overwhelmingly favor the LGBT movement. As public opinion has shifted, a noticeable change in many Christian denominations has followed.9 The function of the reasonable overlapping consensus is to simplify the implementation of liberalism. The thin concept of the good sets the bar very low, as Rawls thinks. Any organization, belief, or practice that cannot clear that bar will not long participate in a liberal society.

Tocqueville observes that, for better or worse, democracy molds religions operating under its sovereignty. Rawls makes that observation a prescription to cure the illiberal diseases of radicalism and intolerance. Taken together, these thinkers suggest religions either accommodate themselves to liberal/democratic societies or lose relevance in them. A thorough liberal will have no difficulty accepting anyone’s religion so long as it does not step outside the bounds of the overlapping consensus.

A parallel question, not directly treated by Tocqueville or Rawls, is the specific impact religious pluralism has on popular religious opinion, and ultimately its implications for the regime. While it is true that so long as a regime remains democratic, so long as the liberal ideals of openness and toleration hold, religions must bow in some sense to public opinion in order to fall within the overlapping religious consensus, it should be asked: might the attitude of toleration, which so fundamentally defines liberalism,10 lead to a cultural and religious relativism for a populous no longer enchanted with its own faith? Must a new dominant faith take hold? In the case of a shift from Christianity (the dominant faith under which religious toleration was born and accepted) to some other religious system, will liberalism remain in a recognizable form, or will something else take its place?

3. Melville’s Darkness: On the Meaning of the Novel

To fully appreciate the reading that follows, a high-level assessment of Moby-Dick and its astonishing author seems appropriate. Melville was not a typical Christian, if he was one at all. Lawrence Thompson gives an admirable summary of Melville’s heathenism (or perhaps heresy) in his note “To the Reader,” with which he begins Melville’s Quarrel With God. He outlines from Melville’s letters and other private writings the man’s religious perplexity. Thompson makes much of Melville’s overtly Satanic confession to Nathaniel Hawthorne that “the ‘secret’ motto for Moby-dick began ‘ego non baptizo te in nomine,” that is, “I do NOT baptize you in the name of,” the inverse of the Latin baptismal prayer and a quote from the execrable Captain Ahab himself. The author of that “wicked book” found himself obsessed with the Calvinism he grew up with, while rebelling against all it implies except the inescapability of fate. He speaks of his determination to be “annihilated” upon his death, but even in this he is not settled (Thompson 1952, pp. 2–13).

These lifelong obsessions (not to say pathologies) of Melville’s only find full vent, despite many other worthy literary efforts, in Moby-Dick. Indeed, the heart of the book, as Will Morrisey notes11 is as tumultuous as the sea, as mystifying as the author himself. The sense one receives from the novel is a return to nature in every possible sense of the phrase. Both an escape from the “plague of custom,”12 and a glimpse at the chaos beneath society. Ultimately, Ishmael breaks free from his American foundation and becomes one among a group of “isolatoes,” on a tyrannical ship of state. He is led to this by Ahab’s fevered charisma. In a shared Dionysian ritual, swearing mutually to hunt and destroy Moby Dick in all his appalling whiteness, the crew is intoxicated by this mania, as well as with strong drink. Nature revolts at every turn and reminds the shipmates that they are not welcome.13 Their rage against the dumb beast they seek leads ultimately to total carnage and, in some cases, apparent actual loss of humanity.14

All this remains absolutely true of Moby-Dick. It is a beautiful, shocking abyss of awful size and depth. This article’s small contribution is a careful reading of the political implications of Ishmael’s experiences while still on shore in America. The following observations may seem almost quaint in light of the overall scheme of that ambitious work. I ask only the patience and attention of the reader as I attempt to describe something important about Ishmael as an American, especially in the opening pages of the novel. The ultimate fate of Ishmael and the crew should be borne in mind throughout as well, as it is the background against which the conclusion rests.

4. Christian Satire in Moby-Dick

Herman Melville’s seriousness as a thinker needs no justification. Calling him serious, however, might evoke the wrong image. Though Moby-Dick constantly delves into the morose, the author never succumbs fully to the darkness ever threatening to swallow his thought. Though serious, Melville is also extremely playful and often bitingly satirical.

Melville’s humor is nowhere so evident as in the early episodes in the friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg. Ishmael is informed, without ever meeting him, that he must share a bed with Queequeg at The Spouter Inn. He learns that his bedmate is a harpooneer, dark-complexioned, eats only rare beef steaks, and is late into that very night on the street trying to sell shrunken heads (Melville 2013, pp. 15–20). When Ishmael finally obtains a glimpse of Queequeg, he learns the fellow is also covered in tattoos and is not a white man with dark skin, but a Polynesian of some kind. Finally, he watches Queequeg in his weird, idolatrous worship before joining Ishmael in bed. Ishmael tries to put all this aside in an effort to bed comfortably with him, until Queequeg, not up to that time noticing his bedfellow, jumps into bed and, startled at Ishmael’s presence, begins threatening him in broken English, wielding a tomahawk-pipe. The landlord soon sets matters right, and they sleep peacefully, albeit strangely together: Ishmael woke up in Queequeg’s “matrimonial” embrace.15 The men become fast, unlikely friends.

Ishmael, by surmises at first and later confirmed (See, for example, ibid., p. 95) by Queequeg himself, learns his bedmate is (or has been) a cannibal. He embraces the strangeness of it all, justifying his friend’s odd appearance, strange manners, and dark past, for the most part, as mere conventional causes of discomfort, not emblematic of any deeper divide.

The main vestige of Queequeg’s strange ritualistic past is his religion. His religion, certainly tied up in the same alien culture and context as his cannibalism, leads Ishmael to considerable puzzlement, and occasionally alarm. Queequeg worships a small black statue of a hunchbacked person called Yojo. His daily worship involves burnt offerings of ship biscuits and “strange guttural noises,” which seem to amount to his worshipping “in sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other,” accompanied by unusual facial contortions.16 Queequeg is shown to consult Yojo directly and apparently receives responses from him (Ibid., chap. 16, especially p. 76).

In the early days of their association, still bedmates in the Spouter, Queequeg—as Ishmael thinks—nonverbally expressed a desire for Ishmael “to join him” in his worship. Ishmael is at first torn by the perceived invitation. As a lifelong Christian, could he really bring himself to bow before a “dumb idol” (Habakkuk 2:18–20)? Ishmael then begins a sophistic line of reasoning to conclude on the issue. The Living God of heaven and earth, he reasons, cannot possibly be “jealous [Exodus 20:4–5] of an insignificant bit of black wood.” From thence he supposes the nature of true worship to be nothing more or less than “to do the will of God.” The entirety of the will of God he elides and subsumes into a paraphrase of one single command of Christ: “do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me.” Ishmael argues that since he wished Queequeg would “unite with me in my particular presbyterian form of worship,” the corollary of this desire on the basis of the will of God just articulated, then, would be “I must then unite with him in his.” Concluding this casuistic meandering, Ishmael states the proven conclusion: “I must turn idolator.”17

Ishmael gives here a blatantly wrested presentation of Christian doctrine.18 No adherent of Christian orthodoxy would accept such a reading at face value absent external impetus to do so. Melville demonstrates elsewhere a depth and sincerity with regard to spiritual matters. Questions of fate, justice, and redemption play central roles in the themes of this and others of his writings. Furthermore, as to taking scriptures seriously (and literally), Melville demonstrates admirable close reading and exegesis in his treatment of Jonah,19 as well as other Bible stories in this work, to say nothing of his own private engagement with scripture.20 Therefore, one cannot simply identify Ishmael’s obvious error (or intentional twisting) with Melville. From the perspective of the author, the scene can contain no mere error, but an intentionally skewed reading of the scriptures offering Ishmael self-justification. So, what is Melville’s intention? Rather than religious fidelity, in this example of Ishmael and Queequeg, Melville pulls out the peculiarly American liberal ethos as it comes into conflict with Christianity.

America contains in its deepest foundations an attachment to Christianity.21 This connection was not severed in the legal Founding of 1789,22 but Christianity as the accepted moral basis of the nation was covered over with a pleasing facade of “toleration.” Religious liberty permitted all sorts of religions. American Christianity had then, as noted by Tocqueville and Rawls, to somehow assimilate itself to that change.

Yet the gospel of Jesus Christ is not inherently tolerant. It requires an all-or-nothing commitment, a rejection of (if needs be) country, vocation, tribe, family, all things in the name of taking up one’s cross in pursuit of Jesus Christ (CF Matthew 10:32–39 and 16:24–28). Having once set one’s hand to the plow, one cannot look back (Luke 9:57–62); Lot’s wife does not receive mercy for her recalcitrance under the new law any more than under the most ancient (Luke 17:32). With this comes the great commission, to go into all the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19–20). Christians in a culture of toleration, therefore, find themselves in a predicament. Rousseau seems correct: “it is impossible to live in peace with people one believes are damned.” (Rousseau 2012, p. 71). Religions thus tend to moderate their goals for proselytizing, adjusting their expectations to the setting. In America, even if one believes his neighbor is damned, he is bound by law to tolerate, if not actively participate in or condone his behavior.

Melville’s treatment of this difficulty resolves the conflict practically, while mocking it doctrinally. The golden rule requires that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and thus apparently necessitates Ishmael’s idolatrous worship of Yojo, in hopes that Queequeg “unite with me in my particular form of Presbyterian worship.” This of course would be impossible absent an invitation to do so, as Paul noted (Romans 10:13–17).23 Only one verse previous to that, Paul gives his famous (relatively) egalitarian encomium: “there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek,” but he adds, “for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him,” (Romans 10:12). Queequeg and Ishmael are equal before God, but the Lord will only be rich unto both if they call upon him. Ishmael, from the Christian perspective, does Queequeg a disservice by avoiding preaching the truth and instead worshipping with him.

Perhaps this reading misunderstands Ishmael: maybe his character is a heretic rather than a satire.24 Such a reading would make this episode a mere, though grave, religious error, emblematic of nothing more than a confused young man misinterpreting scripture according to his own lights. Ishmael as a heretic cannot be outright dismissed on its face, but the evidence in the text suggests Melville’s presentation of Ishmael is a parody based upon his observation of American Christianity. Two phrases in the paragraph in which the reasoning discussed here takes place signal this. First, Melville uses phraseology akin to sincere Catholics describing their relationship to the Church to indicate Ishmael’s denomination; the only problem is that Ishmael was “born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church,”25 not the Catholic. This sort of language sits uncomfortably in the varied, diverse, and fluctuating tradition of Protestantism. Protestants, with some possible exceptions, do not tend to use this sort of language with regard to their particular denominations in the way Catholics do. Furthermore, the concept of “infallibility” in anything with clear connection to human agency does not sit well with Protestants. They often say something to this effect about the Bible, but a particular denomination of Protestantism rarely receives such reverent treatment, despite the fact that they might occasionally act as if their particular church is infallible. It smacks of “Popery.” Ishmael talks like one speaking Protestant as a second language, or else as a personified mockery of Christians generally.

Later in the same paragraph, Ishmael concludes his unfaithful disputation with the scriptures by stating “ergo, I must turn idolator.” Even if one concluded as Ishmael does—that one as a Christian must respectfully participate in the rituals of a pagan religion to preserve amity in a personal relationship—an orthodox Christian would not likely express his self-justification for such an odd sin in the language of declaring his intentions of becoming a sinner. There is no element of regret in Ishmael’s statement, for according to his reasoning he is doing none other than the will of God in explicitly breaking one of the Ten Commandments. One might follow the reasoning, agree with the premises, and accept the conclusion, but upon reading the blatant mockery of Christian righteousness in the phrase “I must turn idolator,” it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Melville is “tongue-in-cheek” (Thompson 1952, p. 10).

Earlier in his career, Melville came under heavy fire from the Christian press for his less than favorable depiction of missionary efforts among Polynesians in his novels Typee and Omoo.26 Melville, it seems, was particularly annoyed with the Presbyterian publications.27 Adding heavier critique in that same direction and increasing the weight of Ishmael’s embrace of Queequeg’s faith, this episode could plausibly be interpreted as a satire of the precise missionary efforts Melville had critiqued in his earlier works.28 In this scene, a white Protestant is evangelized by a Polynesian pagan, a visitor in a strange, foreign land. Ishmael enhances this interpretation by speaking of Queequeg’s confident, firm faith, which was unwilling to countenance other religious opinions than his own. Ishmael attributes to Queequeg a lamentation “that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.” (Melville 2013, p. 95). Granting, in addition to the above interpretation, this parody of missionary work, Queequeg’s transformation of Ishmael’s soul is not merely incidental, but intentional.

Another episode of twisting Christian doctrine occurs much later in the novel. When at sea—though Christianity, like all things not very strictly natural in the most brutal sense of the word, dissolves and fades largely into the background—Fleece, the sullen black cook, is called upon to chide the sharks (as a form of entertainment for Stubb) who are attacking the recently obtained whale carcass hanging along the ship. He preaches them a strange sermon, in which he declares, “All angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbor’s mouth, I say.” Fleece, enjoins charity, brotherly feeling, and, most importantly, sharing equally the whale so that not just the most powerful sharks with the largest mouths, but “de small fry ob sharks” also get their fill. This Stubb praises (in jest) “well done, old Fleece!...that’s Christianity.” (Ibid., pp. 321–22). The whole episode is a farce, but one might ask: in what sense is equality of consumption among a diverse group representative in any way of Christianity?29 No more than praying to an idol represents a Christian duty. In this example, liberalism not only influences Christianity, but in some way replaces something at its heart.

Other scenes in the novel round out Melville’s peculiar presentation of Christianity. Just before Queequeg and Ishmael confirm their friendship, they visit the “Whaleman’s Chapel,” with its venerable minister Father Mapple. The design of the building, personality of the preacher, and subject of the sermon all testify to a certain flexibility in the nature of the Christianity observed there. This being a Whaleman’s Chapel, the walls were covered over with memorials to the lives of family members and friends lost on whaling voyages. These all flank the pulpit, which itself resembles the peaked bow of a ship and is accessible only by a rope ladder, like that used at sea. Behind the pulpit is a large mural of a ship in a tempestuous sea looked over by a benign spirit from his heavenly isle haven. Mapple himself was a retired whaleman who, with apparent sincerity, had turned to the Lord in his old age. He offers the appearance of a whaleman and speaks the vernacular of the Nantucket sailors. He ascends his beaked pulpit by rope ladder, pulls the ladder up behind him, and there, isolated on his watch, preaches a sermon. No one tracking the other details of this unusual church will be surprised to learn that the subject of the sermon is Jonah and his time in the belly of the great fish.30

Ishmael admires these various details but feels compelled to critique the little chapel’s memorial plaques. Christianity teaches the eternity of the soul and such memento mori as these seem not to remind the congregants of their glorious destiny, but only to mire them in sadness at the loss of individuals as if they were really gone.31 We acknowledge their happy estate, but “we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss.” Ishmael wonders why Christianity does not seem endowed with the philosophical calm about death its own doctrine seems to enjoin. However, he does not look forward to the resurrection of the body, as Christ received. Rather he cries “take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.” (Melville 2013, p. 42). Christianity in Moby-Dick seems capable, as necessary, to accommodate itself to this world. Sometimes this occurs to the detriment of Christian doctrine as the world wins in the balance. It might be noted that this particular episode’s critique is a mix: Ishmael both notes a liberalization of Christianity, embracing a too-thorough emphasis on this life, and presents a non-Christian interpretation of Christian doctrine. Perhaps this represents a critique of the manner in which it has liberalized with too much emphasis on the body, rather than too little. Perhaps Melville wrote in cautious praise of the liberalization of Christianity, maintaining his critical eye toward deficiencies of contemporary developments.

Ishmael notices that some Christians perhaps adapt their religion too freely to their context. The key example of this is Bildad, the “old hunks” of a ship owner that Ishmael unites himself with. This “native born Quaker” committed himself to the “serious things” of his denomination in his private life but seemed to shed many of his theological qualms professionally. Though he refused to fight for his country, as he abhorred the shedding of blood as a peace-loving Quaker, he had “spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore” in his days at sea. Though a proponent of Christian charity and peace, he purportedly worked his men into the hospital when in command of a ship (Ibid., p. 83). Ishmael himself bears the edge of Bildad’s practical nature when offered wages for joining this Christian’s vessel that would scarcely cover the cost of shipping him (Ibid., p. 85). “For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least.” How all this can be, Ishmael confidently concludes, is that Bildad “had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and his practical world quite another.”32 In this startling statement, Ishmael drains Christianity of all its moral content, matter-of-factly stating the wisdom of not allowing Christianity to stand in the way of acquiring wealth, in praise of serving both “God and Mammon” (Matt 6:24), thereby effectively choosing the latter over the former.

Notably, Ishmael’s interactions with these “Quakers with a vengeance” come to a head when he insists that Queequeg, despite adhering to no portion of Christian orthodoxy, nevertheless belongs in tandem with all men to:

the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that only some of us cherish some crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands.

(Ibid., p. 97)

This argument, of course, is sophistry to see his righteous, pagan friend welcomed aboard the vessel of these hypocritical Christian businessmen. Yet, as in the case of the other “tongue in cheek” moments in the novel, it is instructive as to Ishmael’s liberalized perspective of Christianity.

The foregoing notwithstanding, Ishmael generally sees Queequeg’s religion as quaint, harmless superstitions of a less enlightened people, when compared with his own refined, liberal Christianity. Indeed, Queequeg’s religion is much like “ants worshipping a toad-stool” (Ibid., 90). For even this Ishmael has condescending admiration or at least respect. However, Queequeg celebrates a “Ramadan” which consists in fasting in a contorted position without moving all day and night long, until sunup the next morning. To this, Ishmael harshly objects. This goes against all enlightenment, all sense. He refuses to allow his friend to engage in a practice so unwholesome and uncomfortable as this (Ibid., pp. 93–95).

Ishmael rejects Queequeg’s religious asceticism not due to its alien quality, but because he must object to any man’s religion when it “becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him, and in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in.” (Ibid., p. 94). He goes further in denouncing all such “Lents” which require some level of mortification of the body. All “fasting” is “stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of hygiene and common sense.” These sorts of religious activities give birth to “half-crazy” (Ibid., p. 91) and “half-starved” ideas. Ultimately, he comes to the reductive conclusion that “hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling; and since then perpetuated through hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.” (Ibid., p. 94). On the terms described above, it seems that a Christian took Ishmael’s notes about accommodating themselves to this temporal world and focuses on the eternities; one might take it into his head to wander the wilderness, enter a monastery, engage in fasting and prayer, all this at the expense of his worldly life; this too Ishmael would reject.

Putting this all together, Ishmael notes the above Christianity that accommodates itself to the perspective of the world, as in the case of the epitaphs in the chapel or Bildad’s stony heart. These observations appear mostly neutral, if a little bemused at inherent contradictions in the practice. These examples of course underline Ishmael’s own accommodationist liberal Christianity; they share a basic similarity with Ishmael’s idolatry by demonstrating a Christianity flexible enough to bear the argument that Queequeg is himself a Christian. The difference, however, seems to be political. As shown in the previous paragraph, Ishmael believes that the malleable American Christianity described here is the superior religion and would have Queequeg, who ignorantly “thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than [Ishmael],” similarly accommodate himself. Queequeg flatly refuses to do this. This pagan evangelist benefits from the liberal attitude of his host, which attitude convinced Ishmael to worship Yojo, but refuses to bend his own faith beneath the rod.33

5. Melville’s Noble Savage

The reading of the opening pages of Moby-Dick laid out so far needs a caveat. Queequeg proves a captivating friend to Ishmael, attractive enough to draw him into avowed sin from Ishmael’s own religious perspective. This provides evidence of Melville’s admiration of the so-called “noble savage.” An appreciation of that perspective is needed to nuance and accurately conclude what Melville is “up to” in these early episodes.

After attending church service at the whalemen’s chapel, Ishmael observes Queequeg in his childlike guilelessness thumbing through a book, in awe of its length. Ishmael admires “the traces of a simple honest heart” which peers through the “unearthly tattooings” about his “hideously marred face,” to which Ishmael hastily adds, “at least to my taste” (Ibid., p. 55). He compares Queequeg’s physiognomy to that of “George Washington cannibalistically developed,” stating further that he and his type seem possessed of a certain “Socratic wisdom” and offers a model in his demeanor for “true philosophers” (Ibid., p. 56). He then feels an inexplicable internal “melting.” His damaged soul no longer wages war with the world; it has been saved, “this soothing savage has redeemed it.” He is drawn to the company of Queequeg as a change from the insincere “Christian kindness [which] has proved but hollow courtesy.” Queequeg, after their bond is confirmed by a shared smoke on his tomahawk pipe, “pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married” (Ibid., p. 57).

Melville gives Ishmael an awe and affection for Queequeg that comports well with his presentation of similar characters and peoples throughout his career. He especially took up this theme in several of his earlier works, most notably and explicitly in passages of his first novel Typee, based on his own travels through the Pacific and contact with “savage” tribes. He speaks in one early passage of the corruption these simple-hearted, good natives experience when first coming in contact with his boat:

Our ship was now wholly given up to every species of riot and debauchery. The grossest licentiousness and the most shameful inebriety prevailed, with occasional and but short-lived interruptions, through the whole period of her stay. Alas for the poor savages when exposed to the influence of these polluting examples! Unsophisticated and confiding, they are easily led into every vice, and humanity weeps over the ruin thus remorselessly inflicted upon them by their European civilizers. Thrice happy are they who, inhabiting some yet undiscovered island in the midst of the ocean, have never been brought into contaminating contact with the white man.34

Melville modifies this teaching in Moby-Dick. This is on display even in the sections of the book on Queequeg’s religion, where Ishmael condescendingly compares Queequeg to an ant and seeks to “enlighten” him on the subject of religion (See Melville 2013, chap. 17). And later, in the chapter on the whiteness of the whale, Ishmael avers that whiteness itself gives “the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe.”35 But even these examples remain tinged with irony, and a level of relativism. This Melville demonstrates in Chapter 13, in which Queequeg tells a story which makes himself appear extremely foolish for misunderstanding the proper use of a wheelbarrow. Ishmael laughs at the story and wonders at Queequeg’s former ignorance. Queequeg then tells a story of a foolish white man who washed his hands in the punch bowl at a feast in Queequeg’s former kingdom. This man, like Queequeg, was the subject of laughter at his ignorance. After this story, the friends board a ferry and are balked at for the strange pair they make. Ishmael observes the foolishness of their wonderment since a white man is not more “dignified than a white-washed negro.” Next, someone on a ferry ride mocks the savage and receives a painful reminder of Queequeg’s physical superiority. For this, the harpooneer is rebuked by the captain of the boat. But soon thereafter the same man whom Queequeg punished falls overboard. The Fijian jumps in the water to save him, to the astonishment and gratitude of all present. The chapter ends with Ishmael supposing Queequeg’s demeanor to say “we cannibals must help these Christians,” again invoking Queequeg as an apparent missionary. Melville offers in Queequeg a personification of the noble savage and repeatedly reminds the reader that he is as good and better than other men.

To this egalitarian disposition should be joined Melville’s own direct comments on toleration and Christianity.36 Lawrence Thompson notes:

Melville’s derisive sneer at the self-righteousness of such Christians as will not tolerate any religious belief other than their own, except to pay lip service to toleration; Christians who in Melville’s day still loved to hurl at some so-called sinners the word ‘heretic’ because it justified their ‘personal prejudices,’ their ‘galling hatreds,’ their ‘warped understandings,’ and their ‘uncharitable hearts.’

(Thompson 1952, p. 108)

These facts lead to the conclusion that Melville supported liberalism, egalitarianism, and toleration over and against Christianity, insofar as they came into conflict. One might conclude that Melville’s impudent presentation of Ishmael’s liberal Christianity, as well as the various accommodations Christianity makes to its political contexts throughout the novel, are both satirical and somewhat wistful. Melville sees the perversion of religion by politics and may even wish to encourage it, at least in the proper direction.37

6. Conclusions: Ishmael’s Liberalism

Socrates in Plato’s Republic asserts that each regime mirrors the soul of an individual like it. His view of regime change might be summarized as the souls of a regime’s citizens being overwhelmed in number (or power) by the souls mirroring the subsequent stop along the cycle of regimes (i.e., oligarchic souls losing power to an overwhelming upswell of democratic souls) (See Plato 1968, Books 8 and 9). Adopting this understanding, suppose the American liberal democratic regime Tocqueville and Rawls see also has a soul that is like it. Ishmael in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, when he is still on the solid ground of America, stands in himself as a proxy for American liberalism. He embodies a Rawlsian overlapping consensus as he embraces and rejects elements of religion for the good of the society as he sees it. And through Ishmael’s observations about the believers around him, Melville underscores a capitulation in American Christianity. The appended “American” modifies Christianity so as to make it primarily the former and secondarily the latter. His approach to the “noble savage” seems to partake in the same spirit. Queequeg may look and think (and act and believe) differently, but so long as he does not harm anyone,38 he remains the equal in social things39 of Ishmael and any man.

As to practical theology of the two religions treated in the early novel, Queequeg’s god is apparently a living, speaking god and Ishmael’s hardly seems to exist. Queequeg loves his religion and practices it uncompromisingly; the same simply cannot be said for Ishmael. In the face of this conflict, Ishmael finds himself, almost insensibly, pulled into praying with Queequeg. Ultimately, this affects far more than religious practices. As Ishmael demonstrates, not only does the presence of a “stronger” religion with little effort make him surrender, but so do the fundamentals of his politics. Ishmael goes through a varied, fraught journey aboard the Pequod which includes the subsumption of his tolerant liberalism into Ahab’s magnetic tyranny, a loss of identity Ishmael only fully40 emerges from when the actual ship (and with it the state founded therein) is destroyed, and in this reveals some hope for Ishmael’s prospects for redemption.41

In addition to introducing the concept of a regime-matched soul, Plato’s Socrates also forwards the historically observable insight that democracies devolve into tyrannies (See Plato 1968, Books 8 and 9). It might, therefore, be simply inevitable that the democratic Ishmael, in the face of the tyrant Ahab, would undergo this revolution.42 Ishmael’s uniqueness is found in his symbolic role as American liberalism, with its complex relationship to Christianity. While it might be true that any democratic soul would be vulnerable to Ahab, Ishmael demonstrates the particular manner in which an American, with his Christian foundations and liberal tendencies, might succumb thereto. On the point of America falling to tyranny, Abraham Lincoln thought no amount of external conquering would make it happen, but rather regime change “must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”43 Similarly, as Tocqueville said, contemplating the descent of modern democracy into despotism, that form of tyranny “will resemble nothing that has preceded it in the world.”44 Ishmael’s gradual movement from liberal Christianity to a tolerance-driven embrace of paganism, and finally to total abandonment of both his faith and regime seems, for Melville, a mirror held up to America and the modern West, but perhaps not to democracy as such.

Given Melville’s religious (and political) peculiarity, the simplest conclusion about Ishmael’s approach to Queequeg’s religion is that Melville therein presents a strain of American Christianity he sees or perhaps foresees.45 In doing so, he exposes the logical conclusion eventually reached by the fallacious combination of liberalism and Christianity. Melville reminds us that these impulses are totalizing. His satire displays a version of American Christianity which not only adjusts itself to the demands of liberalism but proves unable therefore to defend itself against the incursions of foreign admixture, leaving its adherents perplexed and justifying themselves in not only the disposition of toleration but sins which might attend a too thorough application thereof. Insofar as America (or the West) is Christian, if Melville is correct, the liberal disposition apparently includes an inherent contradiction which leaves the door open to a new dominant faith and with it a successor ideology to replace that which welcomed the new ideas to begin with. While Melville seems to have favored liberalism, in the conflict between a foreign religion and Christianity (beyond his oft-noted syncretism) his final perspective is less clear. Whatever Melville’s personal preferences (religious or political), people interested in the fate of civilizations and religions can thank him for his clear-sightedness on the perplexing subject. The theological–political problem remains unsolved, but Moby-Dick, in the reading presented above, casts it in a revealing new light.