Let's Be Ishmaels

Back in the days of whaling, a whaling crew would follow a captain’s orders even if it ended up being to their detriment, as in the story of Moby Dick. The story of Captain Ahab chasing the white whale to the point of his and his crew’s destruction is well-known. Only Ishmael, an insignificant crew member, survived to tell the tale. Perhaps it was dumb luck that Ishmael survived the encounter with Moby Dick, but his telling of the tale is amazing because of all of the curation of research he does after his survival, and all of the mental notes he makes on crew members. Ishmael did not have a one-track mind, unlike Captain Ahab. And just like Ishmael, we need to be willing to look at all angles of literary study and abandon the angles that do not work (even if they used to be the best angles). The angle that is most important to look at right now is the digital and how it can enhance the study of literature today.

One way that the study of literature can be enhanced is by writing often and publishing quickly. Some might say that Herman Melville could have used a good editor when he was drafting Moby Dick. But the book has held its form, and because of the vast amounts of information, and seemingly unnecessary details drawn out in it, many different understandings can be drawn from it. Melville researched, curated, wrote, and published the book, and the book did not receive good feedback at first, just as the digital did not. But in time, the benefits of Moby Dick were seen and the benefits of the digital have been seen as well.

One of my classmates, Shelly Russon, recently wrote a post about how she did not want anything to do with the digital when she came home before her mission, and before that only used it to watch others, but never create anything herself. Now, because of the Digital Culture class, Shelly has learned how to filter and use the digital to help her in her literary studies, and other studies.

Learning how to filter through the digital is a critical tool as it helps us to find information quickly and put out information quickly. Not every idea that is put out there is great initially, but in time as feedback is given, and ideas are better developed, thoughts, papers, projects are launched that really benefit society. The digital allows things to be launched immediately too. Traditional modes of launch generally center on isolation, limited audience, and delayed publication.

People are so plugged in to the internet these days, why would we continue to use traditional modes as our sole means of studying literature? We must stop being Captain Ahab’s bent on one way of doing things and one end goal in mind (getting that essay written, getting that book finally accepted for publication) and start looking at the other opportunities for good around us. We must be Ishmaels and not be afraid to embark on a new voyage and then not be afraid to share our story afterward (even if it takes awhile for people to become interested in it).

What's in a name? An Exploration of the Names of the Six Main Characters of Moby Dick

I love that line in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ("What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?" Act II Scene II Lines 46-47).

I decided to put Shakespeare's words to the test and look at the names of the six main characters in Moby Dick. I wanted to see if there was any extra significance to their names, or if they really were just names. I decided to look up the origins of the names, their meanings, and then the text surrounding their names in Moby Dick.

Origins

I used Google Translate to look up the origins of their names. Here is what I found:

Ahab: German
Queequeg: no response, but Spanish was guessed before I finished typing the name.
Ishmael: no response, but English and Albanian were guessed.
Stubb: Finnish
Starbuck: no response, but Italian, English, German, Lithuanian were guessed.
Flask: no response, but Portuguese and Albanian were guessed.

Then, just for kicks, I decided to see if their names would translate to a language completley different from English. Here are their names in Japanese:

Ahab: アハブ
Queequeg:  would not translate
Ishmael: イシマエル 
Stubb: would not translate
Starbuck: スターバック  
Flask: フラスコ 

The names translated back to English from Japanese name perfectly each time. When I translated the Japanese name to another language like Russian or Alabanian and then back to English, it sometimes went back to the way the  name was in English (like for Ishmael), but a different translation (such as Flask to bulb).

Continued Research into Origins and Meanings

I decided to do some more research into the origin/meaning of the names and came across the site Behindthename.com. I stuck each name into the search bar and below are the screen shots of what appeared.

The only names Behindthename.com was able to find anything for was Ahab and Ishmael (both Hebrew names that English speakers name their children). Both names are biblical, which may explain why there is so much Biblical language in the book (it fits the two main characters). Starbuck had a popular culture reference, but nothing to do with Moby Dick.

In the Text

I decided to look at the text itself to see if there were any words that were commonly linked with each of these six characters. The words listed below are both those used to describe the characters, phrases near the names that I found interesting, or words that often appeared near the name at multiple points in the text.

Ahab: precise agency, inscrutable, leaped after his prey, Captain, peculiar fortunes, side-lunging strides, commanded, a queer man, grand, godly, ungodlike, above the common, a crowned king, a wicked name, King,  "I am a cannon-ball."

Queequeg: Ramadan,  entertaining, absurd notions, content, knew, harpoon, pagan, cannibal, tomahawk, savages, creature, civilized, alone, heathen, Christian, affectionate, ambitious, embrace, kill-e, Yojo.
"A native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. it is not down in any  map; true places never are."

Ishmael: Call me, one, dear, don't be too particular, said I, muttered I, thine, thought I, I, thy, unlettered. Talks to himself a lot. Lots of bibilical language--he is the narrator.

Stubb: luck, aye, easy, pipe, mate, humorous, speechless a moment, involuntarily retreated, old man, wise, laugh, odd, peculiar, Mr., drawled,  counted upon, cheered, cried, supper, Starbuck, Flask, Ahab

Starbuck: lively, friend, chief mate, courage, fortitude, Mr., murmured, paled, right-mindedness, coerced will, cooly and adroitly balancing himself, careful, prudent, humane, too good a fellow, Stubb, Flask, Ahab
"A native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent"

Flask: Mr., one of the wrought ones, little, curious, helped himself, presume, mate, Starbuck, Stubb, Ahab, cruel, cried, water-bearer, "Why don't ye be sensible?", startled

While these words provide more character sketches than origins or meanings of the names, I did find it interesting how one could do a mere search of each character's name and find out a surprising amount about each character before ever reading the text. Sometimes I was able to find out where certain characters were from, like Queequeg or Starbuck. It looks like Starbuck's name is a surname, not a first name like I had assumed in my original searches, same with Stubb and Flask. Let's see if that changes things.

Surnames

I went to ancestry.com to learn the meaning behind the surnames. Here are screen shots of what I found:

I decided to look up Queequeg just in case something returned. I guess not.  It looks like the other names are largely from Great Britain, particularly England (or Ireland for Flask). This isn't too surprising since most white people in the United States (particularly Nantucket, Massachusetts) at this time were from England.

Queequeg

I decided to just do a Google Search, "What does Queequeg mean?" and see what I got. I found a blog post that has a passage I really liked in relation to my own blog post: "Queequeg, a cannibal prince whose very name seems devoid of meaning, is a strange combination of everything exotic and foreign to Ishmael." His name is "devoid of meaning." That does seem quite suitable for Queequeg's character. He has so much character yet he is one of the more difficult characters to understand. Well-played, Melville.

Conclusion
I don't know how much thought Herman Melville put into the names of his characters, but it seems to me like he put in at least some. He certainly thought about who they were and what they represented to the reader, to the other characters, and to themselves. While I'm not sure that these characters could not have been called by any other name, I do think the names, particuarly Ahab's and Ishmael's, were well chosen because of the extra religious symbolism they give to their characters. This was an interesting exercise for me to do and I'm glad that I was able to use these tools to look a little more deeply into the names of these six characters.