SPEAKER_02 0:03

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out. I could not help it now, and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment, he began feeling me. Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin, shouted I. Landlord, watch! Coffin, angels, save me.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah, absolutely. I'll get over myself and uh and be comfortable with listening to the sound of myself on mic. It's tough. It's a galling irony that we are now podcasters, and I I really don't like listening to myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Yeah, the the the most uh horrifying aspect of it is that the that sound that you hate of like listening to your own voice recorded is actually how you sound to everybody else.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah. Yeah. And uh that's just that's I just have to live with that. Can't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah. So, Meg, I see you are sporting a New York Knicks uh shirt of some kind.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Can you believe it? I got like two hours of sleep last night because I was so keyed up. I like went back to bed. I just stared at the black ceiling. I got up, I watched some more clips, I went back to bed. I kept like getting up and on as if I was like haunted by some sort of like Edgar Allan Poe phantom in my house when it was just the memory of watching yet another Knicks game. In any case, yep, it freaking happened, dude. What a time to be alive.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

I feel like if Melville, if he was alive, he would be a Knicks fan, right? Uh like makes sense from like a number of standpoints, right? So one, the Manhattan famously, famously, uh Melville is from New York. Um, two, the Knicks are named after like the Knickerbockers, right? Which is like a, if I remember correctly, like some kind of like stereotype of like the Dutch settlers of New York. Yeah, let's see what it yeah. The word originates from Dutch settlers' breeches.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

That sounds right.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Um, and Melville, uh uh his maternal line is Dutch New Yorkers.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Dutch, yes, the the Gansworts.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

So he'd probably be happy about this. I feel like he'd like basketball.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Oh, I think we could get in there, yeah. Have you guys read The Art of Fielding? No, that novel. Um it's about it's about baseball, it's about um a kid who gets drafted because he's an excellent um shortstop to a college whose only claim to fame is that once Herman Melville like visited, and their their whole identity as a school is based around this. I think they're called like the harp, they're harpooners. I might be making that up, but they've got some sort of like Melville.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Harpooniers, surely.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Possibly. Um, we gotta read this now. I don't know. I like I like baseball and I like baseball stories. Um, um, I like the beginning of that book, but in any case, um, yeah, it's kind of funny to think about um kind of the brick between it's I don't know if he's got a lot of sports in his in his work, but part of the interpretive process is like what we're doing, which is the idea of like, well, what can we apply from what we do know patterns onto other things? You should be able to sort of palimpsess that onto other things. And the idea, like, yeah, you I think you would work for the Knicks, I think you would like the romance of a season almost lost and then turned on like a switch on like a nuclear facility. Seems melbelian in some way.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

I feel like the whale ship is something like a sports team. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

What is a gam but a game of football without the ball?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Johnny, are you feeling like intense um British identity or English identity with the World Cup coming up?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Uh I'll be honest, Meg, I wasn't fully aware that it was on.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Um do you want Okay, we found the one English dude who does not watch football.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

I I don't know, maybe it's a distinct betrayal of king and country, but I could not give a shit.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

My gosh.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

I really I I I I almost competitively don't care.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Okay. Fascinating. That is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

There is a picture, there's a there's a picture of me floating around somewhere on social media because I have lots of friends who are super into football, and and there is a picture of me somewhere sat with a group of my friends who are getting really, really excited about whatever's going on in the football. And if you look closely, you can just see me in the background reading Shakespeare's sonnets. That's uh that's about the extent of my capacity to interact with anything to do with football. You can get me to the pub, you can lead the horse to water.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yep, can't make him drink. But you can't make him drink, no room temperature beer.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

No, you well, but you can, but uh do you have a sport, Johnny, that you watch, or are you fully no sports?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I prefer doing sports to watching them. Um, okay. What what sports do you do? Well, go I've I've now made it sound as if I'm a super sporty person. No, I like running, um, I like swimming. Yeah, and I if if it counts, I do yoga as well. I've never really thought about that as a sport, though. Yeah, I I am I am a yoga instructor in a in one of my sort of different lives. I've not taught for a long time, but I did my training quite a few years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Learning so much. What an interesting life.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Welcome to PequadPod, the podcast on the Wonder World of Herman Melville. My name is Tristan. I'm Meg. And call me Johnny. And today we are talking about the second half of The Spower Inn, the part where we get to uh Quequag uh and all the buildup to that reveal. Um, so yeah, um Meg, do you want to give us a brief synopsis of what we've got here? It should be relatively brief, I think, um, considering this is just the tail end of a chapter. But it's a very brief.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Never give me a challenge um to be brief when I could not be brief. Um, yes, we finally uh go to bed at the end of this chapter. So we leave off with him kind of um regarding the room. And now we finally um we open this section uh with Ishmael in one of those insane moments that happens to a person, like once or twice in their life, which is when you're sharing a room, um, but your roommate got there before you, but they've left. You get back before they do, and then you get to look around their stuff. You're gonna poke around, right? It makes sense. It's fine, it's a private moment. They're not gonna know. In any case, Ishmael is like, what are we dealing with here? So he starts to poke around. Um, he looks around this guy's bag, which is notably more packed than his own.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Um an empty bag would be better packed than each other.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yes, and just a nicer bag where you're like, oh, that's a nice bag. It's like Ishmael, do you see what we're working with here? Yes. Um he uh seems to fail to recognize like a poncho. Um, he sort of it's eventually sort of the social rudeness of what he's doing kind of catches up with them and he puts um he gets undressed and gets into bed and tries to sleep, but notably not very well. And then like the guy comes in, and Ishmael is like, gonna pretend that I'm asleep this whole time, um, just kind of to to watch. He's interestingly, he's like, I'm not gonna talk first. Like this is some kind of power play, which I think is interesting. Um, but the guy comes in, he's covered in tattoos, um, his face, his bald head, all down his torso, his legs. He puts away what um Peter Coffin said he had, what Ishmael calls a New Zealand head, the head he couldn't sell because um the market was so saturated. Ishmael pretending to be asleep then observes him, who we know will be called Kuiqueg, going through a sort of worship ritual with what he calls an idol. And then finishing this thing that it seems that he does before going to bed, he takes out um his tomahawk, which is doubling as a pipe, lights it, gets into bed with it, which is very dangerous. Um, and Ishmael at this point, as um we've read, makes like kind of a sound. Que Keg finally realizes he is actually in bed with him, is quite startled as a human being would be, and then in dialect, basically asks, Who the hell are you? Ishmael is like, I'm about to be murdered because he's a youth and not very worldly, calls the landlord in. In another amazing scene of Peter Coffin, um, who is truly the daddy of this chapter. He efficiently, with really good humor, tells both of them to calm down. This is Kuiqueg, he's a nice guy. And in a very intriguing couple of lines, the very end of this chapter, Ishmael watches Kuiqueg sort of toss the sheets back and say, come back in. He's like, Well, I draw the line at smoking, but I can tell that this guy does seem nice. And I think I was I was too fast in my judgments. He can't climb back in and then quote, never slept better in my life.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Yeah. No, yeah. Okay. Uh so Johnny, what do you what do you make of this tail end of this chapter?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

I think what really kicks out about it to me is, and Meg's just actually touched on it at the end of that superbly succinct but also very insightful summary. Ishmael reveals himself as a character in the back end of this chapter who is yes freighted down with certain prejudices, uh, but who is able to uh uh recognize and address prejudice and to do it remarkably quickly. There is absolutely no doubt about it. He uh transcribes some very racist thoughts throughout this chapter. It will also not be the last time that it happens, but we see him begin to go through the process of moving beyond prejudice, and precisely to do that by uh applying reason, but also by starting to cultivate that uh openness of character, that openness of spirit that a couple of chapters ago, a couple of episodes ago, we were saying that Ishmael was lacking, right? In that in that radical state of isolation that he finds himself in. And that's why among the fraught racialized vocabulary that peppers this chapter and indeed the texts as a whole, we get those superbly uh insightful phrases like a man can be honest in any sort of skin. This is a super different Ishmael to the Ishmael even at the start of this chapter.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yes, mere paragraphs ago.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, when he's like, I look stupid in this outfit, who would wear such a thing? It's like, oh, I was a fool 30 seconds ago. Absolutely, absolutely that's how it happens to you when you're like 19. Yeah, they come past.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah, there is a there is a real youthfulness to Ishmael up in this passage, actually.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, no, that's great. So uh so he he uh Ishmael gets up there, he's starting to poke through Queekweg stuff, which Meg, I think you're right. I think we all do this, I think we all surreptitiously uh look out.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

It's like the the sort of tropey like medicine cabinet moment where you're like, what's what's in here? Yeah, you open it and like Google. Yes, yeah. We all do it. We don't have to say we do it in the podcast, but like everyone we know. Okay, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Ishmael certainly does it. Um and so yeah, so uh you you mentioned it at first. Uh so uh Kuiqueg absolutely seems much better prepared for a whaling voyage than uh Ishmael does. And sort of throughout the rest of this chapter, we'll get the sense that uh Kuiqueg uh is a lot more experienced in whaling. This will be like one of the things that like uh unites or like you know, Ishmael latches onto. Like, okay, this is somebody who like I can go whaling with and can help me out for sure. Um so he's got a large uh Siemens bag, uh, which is definitely better than the carpet bag, for sure. It's better packed. He's got this poncho. Um, one of the things that I thought was interesting about this, and uh I think it's a a running thread throughout a lot of Melville's stuff, um, is I feel like Peru and specifically Lima um has this uh hold on Melville a bit. And we do know uh from a biographical standpoint that Melville visited Lima, Peru, in uh 1844 as part of the crew of the USS United States. I'm gonna pause there. Horrible name for a ship. USS United States. Um, United States ship United States. Anyway, that's what we've got.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

They said put a pin in this and then forgot. And then was like, we didn't update the form. They're just straight up printing USS United States. No, we're gonna look like fools.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yeah. Anyway, um, but this will come up again in Moby Dick multiple times. Uh these allusions to Lima. And then we have sort of like this first one here where uh the the South American pawn show is mentioned with regard to like this uh article of clothing that Queequick has. Um but yeah, we'll we'll talk more about this later. It comes up a lot in the Town Ho story, uh, which is a fascinating piece of writing that we'll get to eventually, but that's like set at like some later point in Lima. Um but I digress. Uh one of the things I think that's irrelevant though to like characterizing Quequeg, and as we'll go through this, uh, and we had a great conversation that will be released before this episode with uh Naima Karshmar, um, that where we touch on this too, is like where Quequag's from is sort of intentionally obscure, right? So he's got this article of clothing that is um specifically like mentioned as being like kind of like something from South America. Um, and then he has this uh idol that's going to be characterized as like looking like uh a little Congo baby, right? Like we have a lot of these different illusions that make it very difficult to place Kui anywhere in particular, and this is going to grow throughout. Um, and I really do I agree with uh Naima, where she characterizes Quequeg as being like intentionally sort of this hodgepodge of like different and sort of unreconcilable like uh racial stereotypes of different kinds of indigenous people in order to create this sort of uh prototypical like uh cannibal or a prototypical like uh indigenous person. And like what you what we have here is sort of this um like parody, I think, of like the colonial encounter, of the encounter of uh like the European with like this indigenous other.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, it seems like everything that could be going wrong is is going wrong. Um, but yeah, I think if you're um yeah, thinking about the character as a tool made by the human author to do something, um, it seems like by making him um not recognizably African American, not recognizably Native American, not recognizably South American, Melville has decided I would, you know, I'm getting he's from a, we're not quite there yet, but like he's from a place I'm making up in my mind that means I am not beholden to any realistic um research like portrayals. I don't have to get like fan my facts, don't have to be necessarily straight. He can have a completely many, he can do whatever I can I can use him in whatever way I want by making him um more or less fantastical. He's so, so cosmopolitan that um Ishmael is he's beyond Ishmael's recognition. I can't even place him from his skin tone. He's so beyond anything that I'm that I've been previously aware of. So um we can talk about why that's interesting to Ishmael, who is the driver of our car. Um, but I think it's also interesting to kind of think about it when like Melville's at his like chemistry set, sort of thinking about like, what do I need Ishmael's sort of like negative here to be? I need him to be so interesting and have been to so many places that not only can he pack a good sea bag, um, it seems like he is made up, as you have said um from the uh from the interview, that he is an amalgamation of anything I want him to be. And he's just so completely everything different that then we know going out from this chapter that he can be capable of knowledge from any place, of traditions from any place, of um appearances from any place, whatever. So he's the the scope of like the possibilities for him narratively are huge because he's not the author is not beholden to any traditions from this character.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

He's a he's a kind of an embodiment of the extracts in that sense, isn't he? He's an amalgamation of fact, fiction, stuff that's real, stuff that's entirely made up from something unpublished, uh or he is from something unpublished. He is from something unpublished. Exactly. True places never are, you know, what is what he'll go on to say about where where Quequeg comes from.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Coco Vocal. Coco Vokal, that's right. And uh um I can't remember if it's in this chapter specifically. I think it is, but we get uh like the tattoos being like this Cretan uh labyrinth. Um like like delving into Quequeg is like sort of getting lost in like uh one's uh racial stereotypes, uh stereotypes of the other. He is like this like inscrutable other to the European subject, I think. As like one person.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

I really, really love that you've picked up on the way that the tattoos are presented though, Tristan, because they serve as a perfect mirror for how Ishmael moves beyond his initial ignorance. The tattoos come into clearer and clearer relief over the course of the text. When they're first described in the chapter, they are simply blackish-looking squares, completely nondescript. They have hold absolutely no meaning for Ishmael. Then, as you say, they start to take on this labyrinthine quality, then smash forward more than a hundred chapters on, and it's actually revealed that what they are is a complete theory of the heavens and the earth. And it's only read, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yes, he exactly have to learn how to read the text, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Absolutely, absolutely, and we'll have ample opportunities to talk about that trope of the body as text in terms of the human form, but also the the cetacean form, uh, as our discussions evolve. But I think it's such a beautiful little thing that Melville sort of draws out for us over the course, not just of this chapter, but the whole of Moby Dick.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Jumping ahead a little bit from when he's poking around the room, uh, when he first uh like lays eyes on Queequeg, one of the things I think is interesting, especially like in comparison to what we get uh earlier in this chapter and in later chapters, is the like kind of fundamental ambiguity when it comes to race of sailors, right? So Bulkington is referred to as being like brown, but he he's uh like tanned on his uh voyages, and like uh there's this sort of mutability here. So when uh Ishmael first looks at Quequeg, it seems like he thinks that this is a white sailor who's gotten a tan and who's got like uh plasti, like basically band, like the equivalent of band-aids on his face from being in a fight. Um, and that's like what uh he he thinks at first he's seeing, and it's only over time that he's able to like okay, no, this is actually not a white person that's like been tanned by the South Seas. Uh, what do we make of this?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Much it's I think there's almost infinite things to say. One thing I will settle on right now is I think it makes Ishmael look increasingly um what's the word to you? He's learning, he's learning in real time what is going on. And the tool that we're using in this moment is Kuiqueg's body. That uh can be that's fascinating, it's uncomfortable. It's um succinct. The question is in some ways over by the time the chapter is over. And also, as we've said, something that the rest of the book deals with, which is like, where's the guy from? People like to put things in categories. We like to know origins. It's not an unnatural thought, but also the idea that even when we were talking about Bulkington in that same paragraph, Ishmael is like, well, I think he's from Virginia. So it's like it's not hard in other places for him to place, or even from our remember, our present-day storyteller, Ishmael, to be like, oh, I now know that he was from Fiji, a place I've mentioned a couple times, or whatever, any place he could have picked that is like a recognizable human sphere for his reader. Um, instead, we keep it um unknown. What that means is both Kuiqueg continues to look mysterious to the reader because he is still mysterious to Ishmael, and that it's different than oh, I just haven't met someone from like I haven't literally met a Pacific Islander yet. It's still a question. He, because of their beautiful um social dance, becomes a like-minded person by the end. And Ishmael realizes that he has had very unfair thoughts that he's brought into this situation, but still the sort of interesting, ooh, the exoticism of his um racial identity not being answered by the end of the question means that this is something that Ishmael as a narrator is interested in, and the project as a whole is taking beyond this one kind of goofy um sitcom scene of he didn't realize it wasn't bad with me. Like, no, this is what the book is gonna be about. And part of that um is is the idea of sort of drawing this question of his like literal national identity out for as long as Melville feels like it is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Yeah, no, uh that's great. Um Johnny, you I know you've been uh reading Typey now. Uh yes, uh, and so as he's uh uh as Meg was saying, like as uh we're seeing like in real time, Ishmael's like brain kind of churning, trying to like how how can I uh fit in this person I'm seeing into like my uh racial category, like my racial encyclopedia, basically, right? Um he goes, okay, this is somebody who's been in a fight. This is a white man who's been in a fight, and then we go, oh no, these aren't like uh plaster sticker thingies, right? This is a tattoo. This must be, like I've heard from in the past, like a a white man who has been tattooed by like a cannibal somewhere, which yes, which is a key plot point in Typee.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Uh, do you want to it is an absolutely fundamental plot point in Typee, yes. Uh, because our narrator Tomo uh lives from a certain point in the novel onwards in absolutely mortal fear of being tattooed, mostly because he witnesses it happening and he sees that it's an excruciatingly painful process, and he thinks, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

It just depends on the location.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Well, yes, I mean the guy who is having it done is having it done, Meg, to his eyes. He's having it done to his art on his eyes.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Hard place to go first. That's that's hardcore.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Absolutely, and so really it's um it's the thing that absolutely pushes Tomo over the edge and he thinks, I've gotta go, I've got it, I've gotta get out of here.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Cannibalism I can sort of live with, but uh getting a tattoo.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Oh my gosh. I think that like wearing a corset every day was no problem for the the white ladies in London. Yeah, I think they suffered more over the aggregate. Yeah. But yes, yeah, it's a symbol of yeah, it's a symbol of the thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

What's really the the one of the reasons that I think bringing up Type is is also very germane, though, is because as we know, Typee is very, very heavily based on Melville's own experiences, right, of uh living among Polynesian people. And so he has a reasonable amount of objective information at his fingertips that he's working with. And of course, that comes back in OMU as well, the sequel to Taipei. So he has a reasonable amount of data that he could use. But what's fascinating is that he chooses actually to dispense with that in his characterization here. And he again, it's been it's this recurring strategy that we've mentioned in just about every single episode so far. He chooses actually to obfuscate objective details, he chooses to make things ambiguous.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Continuing on, um, so another thing that jumped out to me is like in the room, as he enters the room, there's a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed. So this uh harpoon slooming on the bed. I don't know, Johnny or Meg, if you have thoughts. I don't know if we've really talked too much about the harpoon as such. We talked about it a little bit in the previous episode when there's like the the the death harvesters and the harpoons on the wall. But I don't know if y'all have thoughts about the harpoon as like uh uh for the whaler, the the the phallic image par excellence.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, I mean it certainly is. It certainly is, and we are in the I have eyes. And we're of course we're in the section of the book where its queer aesthetics are being set up and developed, and that will get another it's another thing that will get spun out over the course of the text. So yeah, I think we'd be fools to try and look past the fact that we have a very, very um an e an easily accessible phallic symbol here. It's also by the bed, and the bed has already been given to us as a well, as a coital space. I mean, CF what piece is where you get spliced where you is where you get spliced.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Well spliced. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's also um um yeah, I I in no way want to move past um the gay part, but um, I think it's also it's like it's uh very it that's his harpoon, it and that's his job. I imagine they aren't supplied by the whaling boat. It would be interesting to sort of think about like PPE. Like, do does he bring, do you bring do you bring your own harpoon?

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Um I think they do. I think I remember that coming up later. That that is you know kind of a point of trust.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

He would like get it back. So it's very um, I mean, kind of going back to like the goofy thing I said where it's like you get to poke around their stuff. It's his. It's one of his most important um possessions, probably. He didn't take it with him because you know you leave your important stuff in your room. Um but I think I think some of the really the the interesting thing of another interesting thing about this scene, which is so loaded with like everything on earth, is the idea. Um kind of that we are we're skipping like eight social steps of like getting to know someone, and we're just immediately seeing the most um genuine, non-theatrical version of Kuiqueg that is possible, which is that he doesn't think someone else is in the room. And this is all of his stuff. So we see his harpoon, we see him start to like get undressed, he does his like um whatever ritual pretending to sort of feed, this sort of like um saying like grace before bed to put in like you know a five-year-old wasp uh version uh with his with his idol, which was like the this ban that he brought. And we see him, we see. I think the theater of it is Melville is like, here's the real man. We could have met him downstairs when everyone was eating dumplings and he was eating a steak, and we could have had a conversation with him, but we don't. He doesn't think Ishmael is in the room. We see the most genuine version of him that is possible, and part of that is his giant, his beautiful harpoon, which is uh you know, uh braced up against um the wall. So in every way possible is Ishmael learning as quickly and efficiently as he can the nature of the person that he's about to sleep with.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Absolutely. It turns out actually that a proximity to a harpoon is harpoon, not to come, not and I don't mean to keep pushing the the kind of phallic suggestions there, but it is a very, very intimate encounter. Ahab, many, many chapters after this one, will voice the idea that his harpoon is an extension of himself, almost like kind of Sweeney Todd Est, you know, kind of at last, my arm is complete again. You know, it's it's it's that kind of avant la lettre. Um but we also will see we have we love to friend of the friend of the podcast, Stephen Santom.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Friend of the podcast sometime.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Um but there's there's that aspect of it, but we all we will also see that it's a really, really quotidian object for Quequake. It he uses it to eat, he uses it to shave, and he does all of that with remarkable finesse. So, in more ways than one, actually, the harpoon ends up coming across to us as a very, very personal, almost, I would say, intimate object. So nothing of the fact that you know it acquires a kind of well, almost a kind of sacred quality as the uh as the text goes on, and as like the as as the practice of wailing is actually given a certain kind of monumentality, almost a kind of well, yeah, uh, uh, uh, a kind of it's it is it does become a a sacred mythologized activity, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Sure, yeah. So uh I do want to flag a couple of things that I thought were interesting before we move forward. So one, uh going back to some of the uh home eroticism of like this encounter, I do love that uh we do get this uh longer, like we get like a decent paragraph where Ishmael is going through okay. Then I'm I took off my monkey jacket and I was thinking of this harpooner, like kind of goes through all these things as he's as he's stripping down to get into bed uh while he's thinking about this harpooner. And then uh again, I feel like I'm just gonna have the uh I don't know. I'm not gonna uh rein myself in. I I love all the little uh uh New Testament and uh biblical references, but uh after he's a resident Jesus person, resident Jesus person, after he's stripped after he's you know thinking about the harpooner as he strips off all his clothes, he jumps into bed and he commends himself to the care of heaven, which of course uh is a call back to Luke chapter 23, verse 46, uh which is when uh uh Jesus so specifically says, and when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and having said thus, he gave up the ghost, uh, which is when he's on the cross and when he finally dies on the cross.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Classic Christ.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yeah, absolutely Christ.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, he's gonna do one thing. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah, well, while we're waving our um representative flags, I did also want to just mention that I think a really definite intertext that is present in this chapter, and especially the latter half of the chapter, is Hamlet. Uh, it's and it comes back to what Meg was saying so beautifully about the fact that overthinking is so strongly thematized in this initial encounter with Queequeg. I mean, first of all, I want to just draw attention to the moment just before Ishmael panics and sings out, and then there is the first conversation between them. We get the uh we get the phrase, but the interval I spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one. Well, okay, I mean that's how that's Hamlet through and through, right? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

You don't even have to read the play, that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

You don't even need to know. And uh then there's a really wonderful section when he is in bed. Oh no, sorry, he sat down on the side of the bed and just counting the number of times that the word thinking or thought comes up. In fact, why don't I read it for you and you you'll you'll hear, you'll hear just how dense the language of thinking is. I sat down on the side of the bed and commenced thinking about this head pedaling harpoonier and his doormat. After thinking some time on this bedside, I got up and took off my monkey jacket and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. I mean, it's just it's it's supposed to be super, super obvious to us, but it's just it's such a such a bold move for us just to be to have that word just absolutely rammed home to us. I wonder if he's a comely harpooner. Well, maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

I mean makes it easier to be thinking about it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

It well, yeah, absolutely. But I mean, and also kind of the the kind of the subterranean epigraph really of this chapter is there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Right, it's and and again, it's something that will just come up again and again and again as we move forward here.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

One thing there we go.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

I'm taking my Shakespeare hat off now, but I couldn't love your phone.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

It's so beautiful, it's so beautiful. Meg made me think of something. So uh you said classic Christ, and I was thinking, wait a second, one of my favorite ambiguities about the Gospels is the last words of Jesus when he's on the cross, right? So in fact, uh Luke is, I would say, not at all classic Christ, because uh in Luke we get, you know, Father into uh your hands I commend my spirit. Um, but in Mark, who which is our uh first gospel, like our earliest gospel, Jesus says, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabactani, which means, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And to me, it's an interesting choice here. So he's getting into bed. There's sort of this like homoerotic element to it, but he's also thinking, Oh, I might die. You know, this might be like my last thing, is getting into this bed. And specifically, you know, and so that's why we get this call back in my mind to like Jesus dying on the cross, right? Is because he's going into this thinking, this might be where I die. And he he actually goes with the one where he's commending himself into his father, like his he's commending his spirit to to God, versus what we get in a lot of the earlier, like a lot of our biblical illusions earlier so far have been about the fact that this is someone who has been rejected or forsaken by the world. And so he he specifically goes with the last words of Jesus that are nicer versus the ones that are I've been forsaken by God.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

That is nice, but unlike God, someone actually comes. Peter Coffin. He said, You rang? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

How my question is.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

What a great I love this. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

My question for you too is this how long is Peter Coffin standing listening at the door before he before he's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I think he was like, This, he's gonna need me. Yeah, no way he just gets into bed. He's gonna call, and before I start turning out the candles and I get changed, I'm just gonna wait. Because he has seen this before.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

The grin has not left his face since he's left that room.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Like that a cigarette.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah, he's grinning all the while. There's there's poor Sal Coffin in bed with the little nightcap on, going, Peter, when are you coming to bed? And he said, just wait, wait, wait, wait, Sal, wait, I'll be I'll be along. I'll be along.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

The funniest thing is about to happen, I swear to god. You just wait just a couple minutes.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Maybe she's there. Maybe Sal is actually she's she's conspicuous by her absence. She's she's actually just just around the threshold of the door. Listen, amazing.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

Yeah, absolutely amazing. So Peter's coming, yes, uh we we do get some good looks. So yeah, we talked a bit about it. Uh one of the other things I want to flag about Quequeg while Ishmael is watching him from bed is uh, and we talked about it in the interview with Naima, but like Queekweg is described as having purplish yellow skin, um, which is fantastically vague. What is purplish yellow?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Freaking, you got me, dude.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, I think about the color of a bruise. Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Yeah, we've got that. Uh we we get uh, you know, it's only as outside a man can be honest, any sort of skin. And then specifically, we've got um the potential uh wonderful power of the South Sea's sun. Um and one of the things I do love here is uh, you know, Ishmael is sort of uh youthful, but like sort of uh optimistic line of thinking. Like, you know, I don't know what the South Sea's sun can do to a white man's skin. Maybe this is the product of that.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

He's he's never shy about just chucking out a theory. Absolutely. To be proven or disproven.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

No dumb questions.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Oh no, he does have some dumb questions, but but but but we defend the disprove to the invented to us. Yes, yeah. We didn't think it was possible, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

And one of the things that I think is also interesting that we will definitely touch on more later, is I do think it's interesting that uh Quequeg's uh idol, if you will, looks like it's a little it looks like a little black baby, basically. Um basically uh how especially when we get later, uh so I'm sure we'll talk about at some point. Um Pip, you know, we haven't met Pip yet, but uh Pip is like a little black boy who's on uh the Pequad. Um and uh and we talked about it in the uh if you listen to the interview with Naima, um, how Pip has a soliloquy at the end of Midnight Forecastle where he's like speaking to uh like the the big white god up there, like look down on this little black boy. And I think the specific like a calling in of God as being like a white god up there, like you know, the white man's god, versus the contrast of like a little black baby looking thing being an object of worship and being sort of the the exact inversion of what what like a white person at this time might expect God to be like or expect the divine to be like or expect like an object of worship to be like.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Let that cook, let that cook. Um, I guess, yeah, we don't want to. Pip is great, and um, I I don't want to take away from his moments too soon when we say it, but I yeah, I think there's something to be said about like when he is on the ship in the middle of the ocean, for all intents and purposes, he is under white God. Um, even though he's in, we talked about this in some of our earlier chapters, but um, he is at once in the ocean, which is not, which is either godless or the perfect embodiment of God, or whatever you want God to be, or his true nature, you know, minus the people. And you are there in a ship, which is mini-America, the USS United States. And in that one, almost like an alien ship beam, that is looked over by Wasp God. Like everywhere the ship goes, the cursor is on top of him. So perhaps in that moment, Pip is like, there's only one God in this moment, and uh, I'll talk to him in the terms of which uh our language can use. Where here it's folks, by the way. Oh, yes, forecastle, yes, folks. Um, but um, thank you for that. Um yes, yes. We we need a everyone yeah, put a note in that.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Focksal.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

There's no way to know just by reading, which someone has to in any case. Um perhaps here in his room by having his personal idol, be that what it is, we never quite um, at least in this chapter, we're we're stuck in whatever Ishmael decides to say it. He gives it the the darkest thing he can think of, which is like a baby born in the continent of Africa. And we're like, Ishmael? This could have this could have taken us, we could have taken a second look at this. But in any case, um, it's this completely again to Ishmael, our driver, unrecognizable carved thing. And that is as far from going to mass as is possible to him, it seems. Um so short of Kuiqueg praying in his mind, just next to the fireplace, as you as he could very well have done, Melville has him get the thing out and go through a thing, pretending to feed it. It's it's a ritual. We can recognize that as humans, but Ishmael is like, what's going on? Because there's no referent for whatever he's doing. In fact, he uses other religious names for it later on to make it make sense for him. So when we think about like the color of the god, I think it's sort of about like you can do whatever speaks to you personally up to a certain extent. And beyond that, the pretend society that you're in either won't allow it or you have to do that in your in your hammock, you know, privately.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Yeah, and again, that sense of its ability to govern one's actions up to a certain extent, I think, is absolutely crucial. And it it's a consideration that gets even more complex when we think about. To what you were saying, Meg earlier about the very kind of westernized and we presume white version of God that we kind of have invoked at several different uh points in the text. We also, of course, have the white, grand, ungodly, godlike man of Ahab, and we, of course, also have the godly Leviathanic white Moby Dick, these three kind of guiding white forces that are in operation throughout the text. Uh so all of that's absolutely absolutely true. The thing that makes things even more complicated is the fact that this uh little uh idol, it turns out in the next chapter that his name is Yojo, is apparently the uh it is Yojo who Kuiqueg says has instructed him that Ishmael should go and pick the ship. So so who is in control here?

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

And to go back and what a person he picked to pick the ship.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

The world's most indecisive. Yeah, Ishmael Hamlet himself, yeah, exactly. Second most indecisive man in all of the ship.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Pick my favorite color ship. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

And of course it's white, it's made of whalebone mostly.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Yeah. Let's go. No, I love that. And we should definitely talk about that some more later, as well as I I want to just uh foreshadow it a bit, uh, but we should talk about it more later. But yeah, I I think like we I think it's important that there is this parallel between Yojo, who like um has like speaks from the divine or speaks from God to a certain extent, and Pip, who also has a similar sort of revelatory role after he has his later encounter. That we'll get to in many, many uh episodes time. But I think there is a strong parallel between like both of the like you know, the the idol that looks like a little black boy and the little black boy that will meet on the the pequad. Finally, the spell is broken, uh, which he had been bound so long in. Um, and they they finally see each other, and they uh and Kuiqueg realizes that he's got a roommate now. Uh, and the first thing that uh Quequag says is, and I I'm just going to read this as uh plainly as I can, Hui Devil U. Um, which I think is very interesting uh as Quequeg's first line, because throughout this chapter, uh Ishmael imparts a devilishness to Kuiquag, to this harpoonier that he's going to be encountering. And the first thing out of uh Quequag's mouth, uh who's supposed to be this uh devil himself, I think earlier in the chapter too, is uh he says, you know, who the devil are you?

SPEAKER_00 46:54

He knows he has to speak in the idioct of um these chowder people.

unknown 47:01

Chowder people.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

He knows what they're gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

If only I had not dubbed us scrimchanders in the last step, because chowder folks would have been chowder people because none of us can do a New England accent to save our lives.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Oh that's true. We weren't born into it, I think. We're we'll we're forever visitors to the Cape, not the people who were who were born there.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Oh, yeah, like uh tourists, like in Jaws. We can never be islanders.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

But I think you're absolutely right, Tristan, and it is very interesting that kind of contact vernacular that emerges in that ensuing dialogue between Kuiqueg and Peter Coffin. They both kind of find themselves using words from one another's language. Yes, yeah. We get we get Peter Coffin using that. What what's the what's the word? Uh oh you you oh you savvy. I oh that uh Kuiqueg, look here, you savvy me, I savvy you, this man. Sleepy you, you savvy. Queequeg, me savvy, plenty. Abs such a mood that he's just there smoking in bed. Well cool.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

It's like, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

I love that line.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

You can't smoke in bed, I'm not insured. Um what a scene. My god, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

But it's but it's a wonderful, but it's just such a wonderful kind of linguistic soup that Melville sets up for us there. And and it means that actually every it and it just speaks to the fact that we kind of end up on a much more level playing field here by the end of the chapter, and that's reflected in the fact that actually it's a it ru rather than just a set of mutually exclusive ignorances, we actually get we actually we literally end up with a common language here.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Yeah, I love me sabby plenty. Uh I think it's my favorite line from this chapter because I think it, you know, I I think to a certain extent, um, both Ishmael and to a lesser extent Peter Coffin are like sort of assuming like a level of like ignorance or like I don't want to say like stupid like inferiority uh too creepleg. But he's saying, no, I I I get it. You know, I I understand plenty. You know, you I I may speak in uh sort of a uh uh a nautical pigeon, if you will, but uh I yeah, I I get it. Uh this is I'm not nearly as green as this fellow that's uh hiding in my bed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

And it it sets us up brilliantly for that chapter that we were talking about earlier, Bidnight Folkshall, which is such a rich polyphony of dialect and cross-pollination of language, accent, all this different kind of stuff. It's it's fascinating for all sorts of ways that we'll get to when we when we in a million years' time when we when we get to the chapter.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Yeah, Meg, I I I am going to dub you uh our uh official nautical jargon uh pronunciation uh expert. Christ. All right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

I'll get to Googling.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

Yeah, that's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

Or we don't Google anymore, I'll get to duck duck going.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Very good. Uh so one of the things, so after Hui W, um, we get Ishmael say, Landlord, watch, coffin, angels save me. Uh and I again I love doing, I love picking apart all these religious illusions. But one of the things I think is interesting is when Jesus is tempted by the devil in the desert, right? Uh so there's three temptations that he gets. Um, and one of them is that uh the devil brings him to Jerusalem, to the pinnacle of the temple. And it's sort of one of the oddest of the temptations. So the other ones are like, okay, you're hungry because you've been fasting for 40 days. Uh turn these rocks to bread. He doesn't do that. Uh the other one, you know, I'll make you the king of the world. Uh that one makes sense. But the the third one is here, uh, why don't you jump off the the top of this temple? Which doesn't sound particularly like uh it's not very tempting of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

From what I the wine and the bread would tempt me. I'm not sure leap from high place would uh would necessarily tempt me, desert or no desert.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah, uh from what I understand, the the rationale behind this being a temptation is so it has to do with the location, right? So go to the temple and jump off the temple, because uh it's been said, uh, he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Um and the the utility of this is you know, you're in Jerusalem, uh, the place that you'll uh spoiler alert for the the Bible, if you will, you're gonna get crucified by these people who don't believe you're the Messiah. But if you jump off and the angels come down and rescue you, that's a pretty good sign that you're the beloved of God, right? Um but specifically, what I think is interesting about this moment, so we've we've we set this up where uh Ishmael like has multiple times identified this harpoonier with the devil. Um and there's finally this uh the point of encounter with this devilish harpoonier. Um and unlike Jesus, who's gonna tell uh Satan to get behind me and not going to invoke the devil, uh the the angels to come rescue him, he's going to actually invoke the angels to come rescue him from this devil.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

I also like the insistence here. We were talking about that repetition of thinking and thought in an earlier passage. I do like the insistence here on the word landlord. And there's a lot to unpack there, partly to speak to what to you what you were just saying there, Tristan. We have Peter Coffin, who is a landlord of his own very contained space. He he is kid he is king of his own very esoteric castle, but he is a lord of the land, i.e., so he he is not the lord in the celestial sense, but also he's he's a distinctly earth-bound figure. He's not a he he he's this this this is not a person who goes out to sea. And I wonder whether part of what facilitates the development of the relationship between Kuiqueg and Ishmael is the fact that they are seabound. We are heading out into a place where bonds are formed in very different ways, where prejudices of necessity evaporate. It's really, really striking to me that this fraught beginning to a to a relationship begins on land, and then we move into a much more open, a much more fluid, I would even suggest a much queerer space. That is the sea.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

There's a real insistence on the land-boundedness of this entire exchange.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

We're definitely seeing um the different ways um that a person can be like community. We've seen the ways that Ishmael has um preemptively rejected himself from certain groups, and those groups can be physically big or physically small, numerically big, numerically small. He kind of allows himself to be um to to identify as a whaler in the future when he's talking about we will, I will be on a boat with Mulkington, but not quite yet. He is still kind of apart from the guys who are eating dumplings because nobody's kind of talking, but they're there in the sense that they're all renters and they're all cold. He's gonna sleep by himself because he does not want to share the room, so he's not allowing himself there. But then he, in this, the this very sweet end of this chapter, he is he has made a community of two in the bed. So it's interesting in a way of him, Ishmael, like a like a raindrop on like a car window is like avoiding and then glomping on and then avoiding and then creating like all these different what are the ways that you can be a part of a group? Uh obviously, eventually he's gonna be a part of a what that makes sense. And um, but in these sort of opening chapters, the way that he will allow himself um to even bond with um one person, we're about to see. Obviously, this person is very important, it's not that cute quickweg only meet here and then join different ships. This sort of like dramatic and um almost kind of strange way. They didn't need to share a bed, they could have just been meet together for breakfast. But this incredibly intimate way, um, perhaps the most intimate way possible in a book of the time.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

It's it's a really, really drawn-up process that didn't necessarily need to be included. And so it's and so it's it's clearly really important to Melville that we see this process slowed down.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Yeah, the beat by beat of it. And it's not ironic, it's totally like sincere, like it's we're not like, oh, and then Kuika is like a jerk. Like it's like they get in bed, he's a lovely guy. Yeah, it's just like Peter Coffin said he would. I slept better than I slept in my entire life. Like the rug isn't pulled out from under us, it's just and it's lovely. And Kuiquag is a super sweet dude, and we're like, I'm so happy. That's great. Yeah, love for you to make a friend.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

I'm so pleased that you've pointed out the lack of irony at the conclusion of the chapter. Like, there are shed tons of irony in Moby Dick. It's one of its most wonderful qualities, I think. But the fact that it all just disappears in the in the closing passages of this chapter, I think is absolutely wonderful. It's a really, really earnest depiction of one of literature's greatest relationships.

SPEAKER_00 56:56

Yes, yeah. I think the language that he used that Melville has Ishmael used, never forget that it's written by like the author, not Ishmael himself. But I think um, I think the language that he uses is so sincere and so sweet. Emotions to me with his tomahawk throwing the clothes, meaning the the bed sheets to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. This is a very famous passage. For all his tattooings, he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I've been making about? I thought to myself, the man's a human being just as I am. He has just as much reason to fear me as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Words to live by huge Moby Dick line. Um, and then he says, just tell him to put out his pipe and then it'll be fine. Queequeg sort of rolls over as if to say, I'm not gonna bother you, let's go to sleep. And then he says, Good night, landlord. You may go. I turned in, I never slept better in my life. Chapter ends. We are left on such a great feeling. It could have been on like a and but I kept, you know, I stayed awake for a few minutes just to make sure. Nope. It's like what you see is what you get. And maybe you don't know what you saw because he has tattoos and you've never seen that before. But it was lovely and I slept great and I didn't die, and I made a friend.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

Even on all the corn cobs and crockery. I was just gonna say, Tristan, this is the same bed of which Ishmael had earlier said whether that mattress was stuffed with corn cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling. Again, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. It's all over this chapter, even down to how easily he rests on a mattress.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

Yeah, as long as there's a clean and comely cannibal there.

SPEAKER_03 58:47

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

Well, wonderful. That's all. Uh well, I think that was wonderful. Uh audience, thank you for sticking with us. Uh, and uh, we will see you next time to talk about what happens when they wake up together in chapter four, the counterpain.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

But that'll be snuggling.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

Don't miss it.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

You've been listening to the Pequot Pot with Tristan Bavel Marquise, Meg Fansher, and Johnny Wiles. Our music is by Lost in the Loop with sound engineering by Lauren Ayton. The show's artwork is by Delaney Garrett, and Tristan is on The Synths. We want to say a big thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. You can join them over at patreon.com forward slash Pequod Pod for bonus content and for opportunities to help us keep the show running in ship-shaped condition. Ratings and reviews also really help us out, so if you enjoy the show, please do express your thoughts and metaphysical yearnings in the review section wherever you're listening to the show. Tell your friends, tell your foes, tell the white whale on whom you're monomaniacally urged to be revenged. It all helps. Thanks for listening, and until next time, call us the Peacorn Pod.