"Ignorance is the parent of fear"


Twelve days ago we bugged out of Charter.  You were rushed through school and given copies of books.  I rushed to campus and grabbed everything I could find,  fortunately this picture, from the middle of an old paperback edition of Moby-Dick, which copy has now disintegrated, was among my effects.  It is a picture of the kind of head that Queequeg was trying to sell.

As I write this morning, I am staring at my mantle and wondering, if I could get a skull like this for the right price, whether I would purchase it, as those New Bedford folks apparently did.  I've purchased far more foolish items.  That's certain.

These New Bedfordites (New Bedfordians?) were living in as cosmopolitan a place as could be found on earth.  It was the center of a large worldwide industry and its ships, along with those from Nantucket, ruled the oceans--nearly 3/4 of the world!  Following whales, these whalers mapped the sea and made the first contact with numerous non-Western cultures.  Many, many members of these cultures came to New Bedford as they signed on to whaling boats which were in constant need of sailors due to death and desertion.   Indeed, there is a Whaling National Park in New Bedford, a smallish place which rose to occupy the same status as Yosemite for a few reasons.  First, whaling is historically important as it established America as a world power and was the basis of an economic juggernaut.  More importantly, whaling was the first integrated industry in our land, and a man could rise to a position of authority based on his skill, regardless of his color.  Now, I don't mean to say that a man like Queequeg could have been a ship captain, but he could have honor and make a whole lot of money.  Also, sleeping quarters and all other aspects of ship life were non-segregated.

And Ishmael enters this world as an outsider. 

Ishmael, seeking shelter on a cold night, stumbles comically into a Black church.

Ishmael finds himself nonplussed with fear, first of anticipation, then of reality as the head peddling harpooneer rascal serves Melville's comedy.  Appearing, tattooed, undressing, engaging in worship, smoking a tomahawk pipe (still commercially available!) and finally jumping into bed and finding a white dude already there.   "Who-e debil you? . . You no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e!"   

Queequeg proves himself to be kind and civil, a "clean and comely looking cannibal," and Ishmael starts a process of opening himself to the world through this experience, and takes the first giant steps away from his deep, suicidal depression.  "[T]he man's a human being, just as I am: he has as much reason to fear me as I have to be afraid of him.  Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." (Truly, words to live by.)

Queequeg serves so many functions in this novel: he opens Ishmael up to the world, he's truly heroic, truly GOOD where so many are not, but this first function is of great interest: he gives the novel a sense of cultural relativity, a sense which is revolutionary in 1851.

If ignorance, then, is the parent of fear, what would knowledge be?

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