The Rachel in “Ishmael”

by Gary Inbinder

The poem “Ishmael” appears in this issue.
The author explains the allusion to Rachel and the Rachel.

In Moby Dick, Rachel is a ship. It’s also one of many Biblical allusions in Melville’s story.

It was Captain Gardiner, the captain of the Rachel, who lost his son in a whale boat encounter with Moby Dick. Gardiner spots the Pequod, approaches the ship and pleads with Ahab to join in the search for Gardiner's lost son. Ahab refuses and continues his pursuit of the whale. Ahab's refusal to join the Rachel’s search adds another blot against his character that foreshadows the doom of the Pequod and its crew.

Here is the line from Moby Dick that evokes the Biblical reference to Rachel and her “missing children”: '“It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”

The Biblical allusion in Melville’s novel and my poem refers to Jacob’s wife Rachel, mother of Joseph and Benjamin and also the reference in Matthew 2:18 concerning the “slaughter of the innocents,” when Rachel weeps for her children and refuses to be comforted, because they are no more. Matthew, in turn, refers back to Jeremiah’s prophecy; see Jeremiah 31:15: “A voice heard in Ramah...”