Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

The Water-Gazers of Manhattan

Turning his attention to New York City, Ishmael describes Manhattan as an “insular city” surrounded by commerce, with streets leading “waterward.” He observes crowds of people drawn to the waterfront, particularly on Sundays, standing like “silent sentinels” in reveries. These water-gazers include laborers confined to desks and counters during the week who now seek the “extremest limit of the land.” Ishmael muses on why people must get as close to the water as possible without falling in, asking whether “the magnetic virtue of the needles of all those ships” attracts them. The passage suggests a universal human draw toward water, uniting people from “lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west” in shared contemplation of the sea.

The Inescapable Magic of Water

Ishmael explores the deep connection between human consciousness and water through several illustrative examples. He notes that if a person follows almost any path in the countryside, they will inevitably “find water, if water there be in all that region,” suggesting that water exerts a mystical pull on the absent-minded. Similarly, a painter seeking to create the most enchanting landscape must include “the magic stream before him” for the scene to have meaning. He asks why a poet in Tennessee, upon receiving money, would debate between buying a needed coat or making a trip to Rockaway Beach. The answer lies in the symbolic significance of water: Ishmael connects the Greek veneration of the sea, the Persian holding it “holy,” and the myth of Narcissus to argue that water represents “the image of the ungraspable phantom of life”—the key to understanding human yearning.