ABSTRACT
The final chapter of American Literature and American Identity considers Herman Melville’s Moby Dick , examining Melville’s treatment of Ishmael and Queequeg. In criticizing racial and ethnic biases, both cognitive and affective, Melville draws on several techniques familiar from the previous chapters of this book, prominently including the development of interracial romance. Since, in this case, the romance involves two men, this allows Melville to take up (albeit somewhat indirectly) the problem of national norms in relation to sexual preference as well, an obviously key area in practical identity and one that has had increasing significance for social identity definition in the United States in recent decades. Melville also develops the important topic of individualism and touches on the nature and function of the state. Perhaps most significantly, Melville presents a portrait of interracial reconciliation that is multiracial and multicultural—indeed, global. In connection with this, he suggests a sort of internationalism, which is arguably the logical culmination of American identity as universal, democratic egalitarianism.
