Ishmael (Moby-Dick) Ishmael (Moby-Dick) Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (1851). Ishmael, the only surviving crewmember of the "Pequod", is the narrator of the book. His importance relies on his role as narrator; as a character, he is only a minor participant in the action and the main protagonist is Captain Ahab. The Biblical name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts. Because he was the first person narrator, most of the criticism of "Moby-Dick" either confused Ishmael with the author himself or overlooked him. From the mid-twentieth century onward, critics distinguished Ishmael from Melville, establishing the
Son of the Morning (novel) L. Dean commented that the narrator's shifting voice allowed Nathan to "write both an objective account of his past and the past surrounding him, much as the Biblical prophets wrote about Christ, and a personal, extended prayer to an absent God." Son of the Morning (novel) Son of the Morning is a 1978 novel by American author Joyce Carol Oates. The book was first published on August 1, 1978 through Vanguard Press. Elsa Vickery, daughter of agnostic small town doctor and his pious wife, is gang-raped at the age of seventeen. Her father cannot obtain legal abortion. The boy Nathan