Having read about 5/6 of Moby-Dick—a novel filled with religious allusions, metaphysical flights of fancy, and words like “God,” “Deity,” “gods,” etc.—I still have no idea what Ishmael, the narrator, actually believes. Or disbelieves. Like the ship he sails on, Ishmael’s “religious views” (for lack of a better term) are all over the map. One moment, he will sound like a pious Presbyterian; the next moment, a tolerant skeptic; later, a Pantheist. If you held a harpoon to my head and demanded the word that best captures Ishmael’s religion, I would probably say Gnosticism—but then again, some passages do not sound Gnostic at all.

In short, Ishmael seems to have no religious (or irreligious) convictions. If he does, they are only suggested, and these suggestions seem to be contradicted by other suggestions. I’m reminded of T.S. Eliot’s rather harsh critique of Poe:

“That Poe had a powerful intellect is undeniable: but it seems to me the intellect of a highly gifted young person before puberty . . . The variety and ardour of his curiosity delight and dazzle; yet in the end the eccentricity and lack of coherence of his interests tire. There is just that lacking which gives dignity to the mature man: a consistent view of life. An attitude can be mature and consistent, and yet be highly skeptical: but Poe was no skeptic. He appears to yield himself completely to the idea of the moment: the effect is, that all of his ideas seem to be entertained rather than believed. What is lacking is not brain power, but that maturity of intellect which comes only with the maturing of the man as a whole, the development and coordination of his various emotions.”

Ishmael, like Poe, seems eager to entertain all kinds of ideas, but it’s unclear whether he believes any of them—whether he even realizes that some of them, once truly believed, exclude others. Did Melville intend to characterize Ishmael as inconsistent and, therefore, immature? Will Ishmael express a more consistent view at the end of the novel? Or is Ishmael something of a mouthpiece for Melville, thus revealing the author’s own immaturity? My dear reader, let us read on, and we shall see.