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
Ben-Ishmael Tribe lineage through Ishmael, son of Abraham, via Muhammad. Leaming’s reinvention of the Ishmael story as a diverse, crypto-Muslim tribe, bridging the gap of "African and American Islam," and comprising a "lost-found nation in the wilderness of North America," was discredited by Nathaniel Deutsch in the book "Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael". Deutsch concluded that although much of the fascination with the Tribe of Ishmael has roots in American interest in Islam and the Orient, there is no reason to believe the Ishmael family was anything but a poor Christian