Moby-Dick Sexuality and Sexual Identity

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The Pequod is the ship that launched a thousand jokes... jokes about dudes getting chummy while they're squeezing oozing gobs of spermaceti. Seriously. That happens.

In Moby-Dick sexuality is expressed in the social and homoerotic bonds between men. Frequently, it’s difficult to say where exactly the line between friendship and romance is drawn. There are men who describe their relationships with one another as marriages, and who show so much mutual affection that people stare at them in public. Even hunting and harvesting whales even takes on homoerotic connotations—all that playing with squishy sperm oil.

Questions About Sexuality and Sexual Identity

1. Would you call Ishmael’s feelings for Queequeg friendship, romantic love, a man-crush, or some mix of all of these?
2. At what points in the novel does Ishmael express physical or emotional admiration of Queequeg, and do these moments mean anything to the trajectory of the story? Why might Melville go to so much trouble to establish the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg right at the beginning of the book?
3. Can we read that giant white Squid (Chapter 59) and the White Whale as sexual symbols? What might they represent?
4. What’s with all the erotic puns on the word "sperm" in this novel? We’ve got a "sperm whale," barrels full of "sperm oil," and dozens of men with their hands in buckets of "spermaceti," squeezing.

Chew on This

The Pequod has the potential to become a fraternal paradise in which masculine sexual energy, symbolized by "sperm," is directed harmoniously, providing a positive foil to Captain Ahab’s desire to harness his crew for diabolical purposes.

Moby-Dick can be read as a love story as easily as it can be read as a revenge story.