Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Ishmael’s initial astonishment at Queequeg fades during a stroll through New Bedford, where the streets outdo other seaports with actual cannibals chatting at corners. Amidst these savages, scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men arrive seeking whaling glory. These rustic dandies strut in beaver hats and swallow-tailed coats, purchasing ridiculous sea-outfits with bell-buttons and straps that Ishmael predicts will burst in the first tempest. Yet the town offers more than rough sailors; it is a land of oil, boasting opulent houses and gardens that rival the patrician estates of older lands. This grandeur stems entirely from the whale fishery, for the brave mansions were harpooned and dragged up from the bottom of the sea. Wealth is so abundant that fathers give whales as dowries and families burn spermaceti candles recklessly. In summer, the town is sweet with maples and horse-chestnuts, while the women bloom like roses, possessing a beauty and musk said to rival only that of Salem.
Ishmael fights through driving sleet to reach the New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel, finding a scattered, silent congregation of sailors and widows sitting apart in insular grief. The worshipers steadfastly eye black-bordered marble tablets memorializing men lost overboard, towed away by whales, or killed in battle. Queequeg, unable to read the inscriptions, watches Ishmael with incredulous curiosity, while the women present seem before him to have old wounds bleed afresh. Ishmael meditates on the despair of these empty memorials and the deadly voids of those who perished without a grave, questioning the silence of the dead. Yet he asserts that Faith feeds among the tombs, gathering hope from these doubts. Reading the tablets on the eve of his voyage, Ishmael acknowledges the high probability of death but grows merry. He undergoes a philosophical reversal, deciding that his body is merely the lees of his better being. While the body may be destroyed, his soul remains invulnerable, leading him to cheer for Nantucket and his impending voyage.
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