Hi Everyone!
So, I've read through chapter 18 now, and the thing that fascinates me the most thus far is the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael. Ishmael seems to think that he and Queequeg are great buddies, yet he is so condescending of his friend that any form of equal friendship is impossible.
Probably the most problematic thing for me was how Queequeg's character was written. Queequeg's broken English is demeaning. His character is overly simplified into the stereotype of the friendly, naive savage. I was willing to give Hawthorne the benefit of the doubt, thinking that perhaps these depictions of non-white people may have been common to the time period. However, after a quick Google search I stumbled upon the History News Network, which had an article titled "What should we make of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Racism?" As I skimmed the article, I found this lovely statement by Hawthorne himself to a friend which convinced me that he is indeed a racist: “I have not, as you suggest, the slightest sympathy for the slaves; or, at least, not half as much as for the laboring whites, who, I believe, are ten times worse off than the Southern negroes." Here is a link to the website if any of you are interested in reading further: http://hnn.us/article/97175.
I will be interested to see how this relationship continues to develop through the story. However, I must confess that I do not have high hopes of Queequeg ever being treated like a real person rather than a curiosity to be gawked at.
Did any of you interpret the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael differently? If so, I would be interested to read your take on it.
I'm a little confused - Do you mean Melville's racism? I'm sure he influenced Moby Dick (the book is dedicated to him) but I feel like the racist remarks Melville makes are a little back-handed to white people.
ReplyDeleteIn class we discussed Ishmael's strange use of the word "Ramadan" to describe Queequeg's fast. His lecture to Queequeg about Christianity also seems to show his ignorance to cultures outside of Christianity. Is this racism?
Ha ha! Thank you for correcting me. For some reason as I was reading the name Hawthorne, I was reading the name Melville instead. :) I guess that makes my comment a little less relevant than I had initially thought, though I suppose it is still relevant that Melville and Hawthorne influenced one another.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the quote that I found, I still believe that the way Melville writes the character of Queequeg is very derrogatory. I'm thinking especially of the way he speaks by saying things such as "tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" (page 34, the first time that Queequeg and Ishmael meet.)
What I can't quite figure out (and what the quote was supposed to help me understand) is whether Melville himself thinks of Queequeg and others like him as inferior to Christians, or does he simply write Ishmael's character that way? Do you have any thoughts?