‘Call me Ishmael': How Herman Melville caught that elusive white whale – the perfect opening line

Indian Express

09-05-2025

'Call me Ishmael.'
– Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Many would-be authors, should-be bestsellers and wannabe novelists have perished chasing that 'white whale' – the perfect opening line. Fittingly,
Herman Melville, the author who birthed the metaphor in his novel, Moby-Dick (1851), was one of the few to craft an opening line so legendary that immortalised him, holding generation after generation in its thrall. In just three words, Melville sets the tone for the novel, after all 'Call me Ishmael' is not quite the same as 'My name is Ishmael.' One wonders, who is Ishmael? A man? A myth? A voice in the oceanic wilderness?
The genius of the line lies in its simplicity. It is both an introduction and a Biblical invocation, casting the reader into the confidant role. It asks to be heard, just as the Biblical Ishmael once was. There is a theatricality to his first words, a suggestion of persona rather than identity. He may be Ishmael, or he may only want us to think of him that way. It's an adopted name, a mask, and one loaded with biblical meaning.
The name Ishmael is steeped in significance across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Book of Genesis, Ishmael is Abraham's first son, born of Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian servant. Cast out into the wilderness with his mother, Ishmael is marked from birth by exclusion and exile. But in the desert, an angel tells Hagar: 'Thou shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.'
To be named Ishmael is to be known by suffering, to be heard by God, but not necessarily to be comforted. Melville's Ishmael, too, begins his journey as a man afflicted—a self-confessed sufferer of a 'damp, drizzly November in my soul.' He heads to sea as a kind of therapy, to stave off 'methodically knocking people's hats off.' Melville knew the biblical Ishmael intimately—raised a strict Calvinist, he was fluent in the scriptural undercurrents he channels here.
This is not a voyage of commerce or conquest, but of existential necessity. He boards the Pequod to save himself from depression, madness, and violence. And yet, by the novel's end, he is the sole survivor of a doomed mission driven by another man's (Ahab's) obsession. He drifts again, now quite literally, clinging to a coffin repurposed as a life buoy.
That Ishmael survive is essential, after all someone must live to tell the tale. And yet, the tale itself is strange and fractured. Ishmael recounts episodes he could not have personally seen. He recounts Ahab's most private soliloquies, scenes where he is absent. His omniscience is suspect. His narrative, possibly mad, which just adds to the enduring myth.
Published under the original title The Whale, Moby-Dick was Melville's sixth and least-popular novel during his lifetime. However, today it is widely considered a cornerstone of American literature. That first line—'Call me Ishmael'—has become cultural shorthand. It's quoted in films, parodied in cartoons, reimagined in novels, memes, and advertisements. Its biblical and literary gravitas make it instantly recognisable.
Over time, the phrase has spawned a small library of titles, tributes, and transformations. Michael Gerard Bauer's Don't Call Me Ishmael (2006) uses the name to explore teenage awkwardness and resilience, while Charles Olson's 1947 Call Me Ishmael repurposes it as a lens into American myth and Melville's legacy. Logan Smalley's Call Me Ishmael Phone Book (2020) transforms the line into a crowdsourced celebration of books that changed lives.
In poetry, the line—and the figure—has had a particularly enduring afterlife. Consider the poet Agha Shahid Ali, whose work often meditates on exile and longing. His recurring evocations of Ishmael in collections such as The Beloved Witness and The Half-Inch Himalayas cast the biblical outcast as a symbol of displaced identity and spiritual estrangement. In the poem, Tonight, he writes: And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—/God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.)
('Drawing a Line' is an eight-column weekly series exploring the stories behind literature's most iconic opening lines. Each column offers interpretation, not definitive analysis—because great lines, like great books, invite many readings.)
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More