On our first weekend wrap up, I'll be talking about our weird, sometimes relatable narrator Ishmael. What do we know about this guy? Who is he? Why is he?

"Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs."

Ishmael is the ship, the ship is Ishmael. 

"I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity." 

Peleg and Bildad wish the crew a farewell like worried parents. And we've finally set sail...!  

"It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf."

Ishmael and Queequeg are accosted by Elijah again and eventually go on board the Pequod. They sit on a man. 

"If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea."

Ishmael quantifies all the preparations for making The Pequod sea-worthy. 

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."

Some old sailor on the street starts ranting about Ahab and gives Ishmael the heebie-jeebies. 

"Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who ain't pretty sharkish."

Ishmael and Queequeg go to The Pequod and Bildad and Peleg give Queequeg a hard time for not being Christian. Queequeg then demonstrates his badass-ery by throwing a harpoon and suddenly they don't give AF. 

"Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling."

Ishmael returns to the inn and freaks out because he's neurotic. After telling everyone in the inn that Queequeg has had a stroke, he breaks down the door and Queequeg is fine. He then gives Queequeg a freakin lecture about how religion is bad. In bed. 

"Aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see."

Ishmael signs with a ship named The Pequod. He asks about the spooky captain. 

"A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows!"

This episode is about exactly what you think it's about.