How does Ishmael progress as a character in Moby Dick? My teacher told me that all main characters in some way develop through the story but I do...

While Ishmael is absent from parts of the narratives and digresses with scientific discussion of the whale, he at first links himself with Queequeq and then pairs with himself through much of the narrative. He becomes linked to Captain Ahab in his fatalistic view, but rejects that and reaches a deeper fulfillment with self realization of his own basic feelings. In a sense, he is reborn as he clings to the coffin and the "baptismal" waters of the sea.

With the utterance of the famous first sentence in Moby Dick, Ishmael suggests himself that he will wander through various convictions and metaphysical thoughts as he dwells on predestination, free will, evil, and the existential condition.

According to Christopher S. Durer in Mocking the "Grande Programme," the character Ishmael progresses through four stages of development during the narrative of Moby Dick:

1. Chapters 1-18: Ishmael holds an ambivalent attitude towards this Prorgramme; he half-believes in the Calvinistic predestination of Father Mapple, but has some doubts. 


2. Chapters 19-43: Ishmael begins to lose any belief in this "grande programme" and gravitates towards Ahab's belief in the "pasteboard masks" of Nature there lies an "inscrutable malice."


3. Chapters 44-93: He starts to give this "programme" no credibility, calling the universe "a practical joke."


4. Chapters 94-105: Ishmael rejects the "grande programme" entirely.

1. Whereas in the early chapters of Moby Dick, Ishmael acts primarily as a narrator, in the later chapters, he becomes an active participant of the crew and is central to the tragedy at the end. Nevertheless, Ishmael shows signs of being influenced rather easily as he is initially fearful of the savage harpooner Queequeq with whom he is to room in Nantucket; then the next day, he narrates that they are companions. Ishmael jokes that the harpooner slept with his arm around him, and they are now "married." Nevertheless, Ishmael feels himself apart from others.

2. He remains in conflict with his Presbyterian beliefs, expounded by Captain Mapple. In Chapter 41, in which Captain Ahab unites the crew in the search for Moby Dick, offering a doubloon to whoever first sights the white whale, the harpooners partake of a communion of wine that parodies the Christian ceremony. Swept up in the excitement and unity, Melville's narrator declares, "I, Ishmael, was one of that crew...my oath had been welded with theirs." Nevertheless, Ishmael remains skeptical as in Chapter 47 he comments upon chance that "rules by turns" with necessity, and later he speaks of "the audacious seas" that ignore the "blessed light of the evangelical land." He notes, too, Ahab’s obsession with the whale as far greater than that of the other sailors. When Ahab projects a sense of the presence of evil in the world onto the White Whale, Ishmael observes that this projection is absurd; however, he also begins to give credibility to Ahab's conviction that there is "but a pasteboard mask"; that is that there is an evil force lurking behind creation.

3. In Chapter 49 Ishmael rejects the ideas of Romanticism and comments that there are certain times that life is, as Ahab says, inscrutable. At times it seems to be "a practical joke" on man. Further, in Chapter 72, "The Monkey Rope," Ishmael speaks of his Siamese relationship with Queequeq in the ropes that hold them in place: "Queequeq was my own inseparable twin brother...." Then, in Chapter 83, Ishmael recalls Father Mapples's mention of Jonah and the whale; he realizes from his new study of this mammal that the stomach juices of the whale would destroy a man. This discussion marks his increasing skepticism of religious teachings (the "practical joke.")

4. In the latter chapters, Ishmael feels that Ahab's projection of all evil onto the single creature of Moby Dick is absurd. But, because other cultures have also found malevolent forces in the world, Ishmael hints that the belief in an intelligent and evil presence has credibility enough for him to reject "the grande programme" of the Divine. Instead, a more sinister presence seems to take hold of the world, Ismael concludes.

Finally, Ishmael's camaraderie with the crew ends as Ishmael becomes more independent and breaks from the restrictions of religion. He mentions the grande programme very little after Chapter 94 in which he takes more delight in pure physical activity and socialization with others rather than acting as a crewman. His new perspective of Chapter 94 demonstrates that Ishmael has achieved independence and is no longer dependent upon "the grande programme" of order imposed by Providence.

As some critics note, Melville has taken his narrator out of the bondage of an order imposed by a controlling God and given him existential freedom to choose the direction of his life. With the narrative of Quequeeq, who has transferred the stories of his tattoos onto the coffin, Ishmael need wander no more; he can forge his own existence.

Additional Source:

Durer, Christopher S. "Mocking the 'Grande Programme'": Irony and after in Moby Dick." Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 36.4(1982):249-58. Print.