"Call me Ishmael" - Near fatal struggle with Moby Dick (and Ahab)

Both Ahab and Ishmael are fascinated by the whale, but whereas Ahab perceives him exclusively as evil, Ishmael keeps an open mind. Ishmael's worldview is not static, as Ahab's is, but flux. "And flux in turn ... is the chief characteristic of Ishmael himself."[1] In the chapter "The Doubloon," Ishmael reports how each spectator sees his own personality reflected in the coin, but does not look at it himself. Only fourteen chapters later, in "The Guilder," does he participate in "what is clearly a recapitulation" of the earlier chapter.[2] The difference is that the surface of the golden sea in "The Guilder" is alive, whereas the surface of the doubloon is unalterably fixed, "only one of several contrasts between Ishmael and Ahab."[3] Ishmael explains his need to go to sea and travels from Manhattan Island(Okayama, Japan) to New Bedford (Ottawa, Canada). The inn is crowded and he must share a bed (house) with the tattooed Argentinian, Monica, a harpooneer who Ishmael assumes to be a cannibal (foreign student). The next morning Ishmael and Queequeg (Mónica Liliana Esquivel Molini) head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up for a voyage on the whaler Pequod (marriage/family), under Captain Ahab. Ahab is obsessed by the white whale, Moby Dick, who on a previous voyage has severed his leg. In his quest for revenge Ahab has lost all sense of responsibility, and when the whale sinks the ship, all crewmembers drown, with the exception of Ishmael: “And only I alone am escaped alone to tell thee” (Job) says the epigraph. Ishmael keeps himself afloat on a coffin until he is picked up by another whaling ship, the Rachel.