Call me Ishmael.

These three words open Moby-Dick, in the chapter called “Loomings”. The narrator introduces himself, then explains why he went to sea: some years ago, never mind how long, with little money and nothing to keep him on shore, he thought he would “see the watery part of the world”. It is his way of driving off the spleen: whenever it is “a damp, drizzly November” in his soul, whenever he finds himself pausing before coffin warehouses, he knows it is high time to get to sea. The voyage will take him aboard the whaler Pequod, under the command of Captain Ahab.

Melville knew the sea: he had sailed on a whaler in the early 1840s. Moby-Dick appeared in 1851, first in London, then in New York, and sold poorly; its fame came only in the twentieth century. The name recalls the Ishmael of Genesis, the son of Abraham cast out into the wilderness, and the phrasing, “call me”, leaves open whether it is the narrator’s real name.

Moby-Dick, Chapter 1, Loomings (opening sentence), 1851

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