“As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or fasting and Humiliation, [1] was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till toward night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect toward everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping toadstool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanship [2] quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.”

Having left Queequeg to his rituals concerning his little black god and their impending journey, Ishmael, becomes concerned near evening, wondering if his harpooner friend was ill. In a very childish manner, Ishmael rushes around, rousing the land lady to try and break into the room. It is revealed that this New England lady owns a black slave boy on the eve of the Civil War, who, like most human property of women is treated badly. [3]

The bulk of the chapter is written in domesticated hyperbole to the point of poor comedy, and might not be a case of bad execution, but a way of demonstrating the petty vision reflected by Ishmael’s actions. Eventually the door to Queequeg’s temporary sacral space is breeched and he is found to have rapidly wasted himself.

“I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the reason dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, “rather disgressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans…

“…He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety. [4]

“At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of his Ramadan., we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.”

1. Humiliation is a Puritan term for shaming oneself before God in atonement for sins.

2. A footman was the personal servant of a well-to-do man, therefore footmanship represents slavish behavior.

3. In this period and earlier, a black slave or servant is typically referred to as a black or Negro, while the term servant is used to describe white slaves. The term slave, having originally been used exclusively to denote whites in the 1600s, was, by the 1800s, applied to un-free blacks, mostly by abolitionists. The key term for un-free people in this period was bondsman, meaning they had no right to leave the service to, and rule by, the master to which they were bond.

4. Any combat athlete is familiar with Queequeg’s position, as he looks on hopelessly into the vacant eyes of a concerned, materialistic non-combatant who does not understand why a man would ever toil, suffer or fight.