Blithedale Romance to High Seas Bromance

Well thirty some odd chapters in to Moby Dick and it's nothing short of a delight. This story is so rich with references to history, culture, and other writing that there was rarely a chapter that didn't give me something to new to think about. I think what I want to discuss today though is a subject we went into for a measure in class, which is conduct between Ishmael and Queequeg that some considered homo-erotic. Homo-eroticism certainly crops up in it's fair share of stories in the realm of past writings and I think at times it may lead us to make assumptions too fast at what an author is going for, and while I cannot deny how comically close the two characters are at times I think there are specific elements that are missing from this story so far that separate their antics apart from homo-erotic behavior.

Admittedly part of my disposition on this subject could arise from the fact that I a pre-conception of homo-eroticism in literature as being something uncomfortably passionate between two men or women in a setting where it isn't expected, but overall Ishmael and Queequeg's antics were far too open for me to think there was some hiding latent sexual attraction between them. In fact most of the "taboo" elements such as Ishmael's waking up with the Queequeg's arm over him in chapter 4 is presented with an large air of comedy about it, and there is such a casual air about Queequeg''s disposition that none of it really seems that scandalous or hidden between the two. It all plays itself out much more like the modern equivalent of two guy friends, one of whose wife constantly views their antics and says "Oh why don't you two just marry each other for christ's sake!"

But again, I'm more prone to classify homo-eroticism as something that is feared by characters or hidden, such as Antonio toward Sebastian in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." The way that Ishmael frets over Queequeg in chapter 17 during his Ramadan shows comic concern that doesn't play out as one secret lover to another, but perhaps a mother to a child, or an old couple that has been married for years. There weren't any of those tell-tale passages wherein Ishmael accidentally goes to far with a description of his comrades' body and unwittingly reveals to the reader that he's been studying his friends body with too much interest. Even the passages in which he describes their "Heart's Honeymoon" and tells them off as a "cosy loving pair" seems like the simile goes to far, too intentionally inappropriate. Ishmael is too amused with the whole retrospective comparison for it to be something deep and steamy.

In summation, I think Ishmael's openness and perhaps naivety toward the whole ordeal, and even the two's openness for their camaraderie around other characters takes away the secrecy element, and without secrecy there is no desperation, no passion between these characters, and secret passion is the main ingredient in literary homo-eroticism. What we have here seems more like one of the first guy-pal stories ever written