Dear Herman Melville,

I am an 11th grader in high school and want to have a little talk with you about your work, Moby Dick. It did not hook (Definitely not pun-intended) me at the start due to your queer old-schooled writing style, but my immersion in whaling and connection to characters began to feel like a roller coaster (Ask Wikipedia what that means) of emotions and adventures. That not only transported me back in time to 19th-century America, but it also got me obsessed with whales, like Ishmael and Ahab were. My teacher, Ms. B bullied me into reading this book and threatened that I’d get dropped from my English class if I didn’t read it. However, I got to thank her for this experience because it developed my critical thinking and literary analysis skills. I can’t help but wonder at your descriptions of the vastness and grandeur of the ocean, giving me the thought of becoming a sailor and getting on a ship like the Pequod.

It was, for sure, a different experience from reading other literary pieces like Twain’s Adventures of Huck Finn. Your incorporation of symbolic elements made me go wow, such as comparing Ahab’s obsession to the human condition and beastly ambitions, or the sperm and right whales being nature, fate, and God. However, one question is left lingering: What is Moby Dick a story of? Is it a narrative of the theme of civilization vs wilderness? Or can it be a critique of capitalism as whalers exploit nature? Perhaps it’s about searching for life’s unknown and the truth of the universe. I wonder what you, as the author, think the reason you wrote the book for is.

Well, the way you mixed up philosophical jargon (I hated those), whaling anatomy, and life on the ship perfectly blend fiction and non-fiction writing. You were too ahead of your time, and that non-conformity did not appeal to the rigidity of the 1800s. Instead, it is in every high school and college classroom in 21st-century America. I want to let you know how much I appreciate your revolutionary mythmaking and that you did not die as a failure.

There is so much stuff I wish to ask you about. Did you model yourself after Ishmael to show a similarity in experiences and personality? Or is it someone else you met when you were a sailor? I reckon that if we readers are calling you by that name, you had a damp, drizzly November in the soul as a young man, then set out to water with a pastoral view, and returned home with a gothic vision after your crewmates all perished. Even though you were such a tragic hero with luck coming your way, you still wanted to sail out after referencing the whales’ divinity and mysticism in an unfinished whaling autobiography. Am I making sense to you with what I’m saying? Did you have that bright Romantic idea of searching for answers to the unanswerable? Or you might just be mirroring Ishmael’s character traits? Insecurities?

Nevertheless, you educated me a lot on Western classics and Biblical terms. Alluding to Shakespeare, Plato, and the Bible, there were so many metaphysical concepts that also related to Roman and Greek mythologies. Why all this hassle? Do these heavyweights add depth or complexity? Or are they just nods to literary greats that came before you? They appear as omnipresent truths that involve concepts like the division of fate, chance, and free will as forces controlling lives, or the ambiguity of good and evil beings in heavenly whales. I do agree with a lot of Ishmael’s blabbering on Kant and others because even philosophers today haven’t answered them, encompassing the meaning of life, mortality, and the individual’s place in the grandness of our cosmos.

Other than these abstract ideas, I feel as if you purposely built the bond between Ishmael and Queequeg to be homosexual and not platonic so that same-sex relationships can be normalized in your time. Obviously, in the public sphere, it’s not possible to call for those progressive changes in American society. Did you put their pen to paper so that your intended audiences can break gender stereotypes in their respective lives? I know you and your wife had children, but do you identify as they/them? Perhaps, that huge chunk of Moby Dick dedicated to squeezing the sperm, sleeping with Queequeg, and more is just a rebellious voice? Throughout the book, I’ve always thought that Ishmael did all this to show his disconnection from the repressive American identity and his association with the indigenous community. Tell me if I am right. And connecting to that, though my teacher told me to skip reading the chapter Cetology (apologies), I read it but why would Ishmael assert that whales ought to be regarded as fish rather than mammals, as classified by 19th-century zoology? Is that a rebellion against the sciences? Or am I missing something? Sorry for asking so many questions, but I do need some answers. 

All in all, the element of your novel that captured me the most is the theme of man vs wild and sanity vs insanity. Firstly, why would you make the setting of chapter #1 in New York as opposed to Nantucket, a whaling town? It was a thought-provoking question, but I figured that it must have to do with the metropolitan features of New York. As a highly urbanized state, people living there would try to find the sameness across abysses of differences to bridge gaps and find those with similar races, ethnicities, interests, goals, genders, etc. This is known as cosmopolitanism. However, when you leave urbanization and venture beyond the frontier, it is more about eradicating those differences by accepting everyone is unique and man-to-man bonds are hard to form because only yourself hold the key to the truth of the universe. That’s Ahab’s idea and the opposite of cosmopolitan ideals. He is drowning in the darkness. 

I feel as if you were trying to establish the insecure Ishmael as a foil for the egoistical captain. Ishmael can bond with Queequeg, as he finds atonement with the father and finds out that the civilized and uncivilized can combine and make something else, meaning he doesn’t need to belong to either civilization or wilderness. It is about being a liminal figure and finding a balance. Is that what you were thinking when you wrote it? 

And with admiration and gratitude, 

A Dreamer Lost in Your Whaling Seas