MDDM Comparing Wicks and Ishmael as narrators

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> on 10/2/02 10:54 PM, Thomas Eckhardt at thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de wrote:
> 
> > Rob wrote:
> >
> >> There is no intervening narrative agency between Melville and Ishmael in
> >> _MD_.
> >
> > What about chapters 37-39? They are being told from the inner POV of Ahab,
> > Starbuck, and Stubb.
> 
> Quite right. With the stage direction which opens Ch. 36 we start to shift
> into a theatrical mode. 37-39 seem to be interior monologues, soliloquys
> almost, and then there is the full-on playscript at Ch. 40. Ch. 41 begins:
>  so it appears from this
> reorientation that he is conscious of, and perhaps even had a hand in, the
> composition of the preceding chapters, the "play". In other words, unlike
> Wicks, Ishmael is aware of the process and upshot of the narrative in those
> preceding chapters; whoever narrates (or *directs*) those four chapters (and
> I don't think 37-39 are entirely isolated from the chapters on either side -
> the transitions to an alternative narrative frame are much less disruptive
> and disorienting than in _M&D_) is closely aligned with Ishmael's point of
> view, and overtly so. (I'd suggest that Ishmael is the playwright, that
> these are in fact the literary manifestation of *his* imaginative flights,
> but there is no hard evidence for this speculation.)

If he is the playwright, he is also an actor in the play. 

"I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;
my
 oath had been welded with theirs ... ",

That "crew" is  the "Frantic Crew"
at the close of Chapter 37 (sunset). 


To return to another issue, We can't be sure, just yet, why Ishmael
joined in with the frantic crew. 
What or who sucked him in? 
Kind of an odd way to float at the margins (Epilogue). Oh yes, what of
the Etymology and Extracts? Almost as confusing as the first line of
M&D.