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Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, This passage is another example of Ishmael viewing his bedmate for the first time.

I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. I reread Moby Dick recently, and I disagree about Ishmael and Queequeg being in a homosexual marriage, as well as there being a distinct homoerotic tone in the book. At the beginning of Moby Dick, Ishmael's relationship to Queequeg is very close to what we today would understand as gay.

His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. He also discusses the scars on his body that he assumes are from war.

The fact that he points out that he seems to have been in war is a way for the presumably wealthy and educated Ishmael to determine that this islander is in a class lower than himself. Ishmael describes their unlikely union:. He keeps pointing out the blackness of the man.

There is an intimacy as he watches him undress, and he also learns a great deal about Queequeg from looking at his dress, body, and bedtime customs. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concernedI will here venture upon a little description of him.

The fluidity Tinsley discusses concerns race and sexuality as sailors and slaves questioned and sometimes changed who they were at home for hidden desires of other men and men of other races and social standings while they were at sea.

These are theoretical and ethnographic borderlands at sea, where elements or currents of historical, conceptual, and embodied maritime experience come together to transform racialized, gendered, classed, and sexualized selves. Was Herman Melville homosexual?

I will examine a few key passages from Tinsley in light of the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg at the beginning of Moby Dick. It's possible Melville though about some characters as gay, but all of the examples in the articles have more convincing explanations, in my opinion.

He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. In much the same way, Melville hints at a similar dynamic between the well-educated narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, and the South Pacific harpooner, Queequeg, who are forced to share a bed while waiting for their whaling ship to depart.

The ocean and water are metaphors for fluidity. He describes him as a powerful man and he seems to be fascinated by him through his fear. Queequeg grabs Ishmael and says they're married (supposedly, in his culture, this would mean they're 'like brothers'), they go to bed unclothed (a common practice at the time, as I understand) and spend the whole night.

As a high-schooler I remember one of my teachers commenting about how Moby Dick was about Melville's difficulty coming to grips with his homosexuality. This wateriness is metaphor, and history too. Ten years later I read Moby Dick with as much objectivity as I could muster and was shocked by Ishmael and Quequeg's bedsharing and pipe-sharing.

Conceptualizing the complex possibilities and power dynamics of the maritime, Fajardo posits the necessity of thinking through transoceanic crosscurrents. Tinsley contends:.

Finished Moby Dick and :

Relationships are identities in the Black Atlantic were often ambiguous and empowering as well. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. This passage is interesting because it is the first time Ishmael sees the Islander who he has been afraid of as soon as he learned they were bunking together.

The ocean and the slave ship of the 17 th century as a place where blackness and queerness came together at a specific time in history with specific implications for identity politics during that time.