January 16: Queequeg, Immigrants, Old Story

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face, his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too- perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine- heavens! look at that tomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime- to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.

"Who-e debel you?"- he at last said- "you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

Ishmael succumbs to his ignorance.  He has no idea what to make of the strange harpooneer, who is tattooed from head-to-foot and certainly not a Christian.  Ishmael's reaction is very human.  Queequeg--as we will soon learn is the harpooneer's name--fills him with fear.  Certainly, there are all kinds of stereotypes floating around in Ishmael's head.  Queequeg is a "savage."  A cannibal or headhunter.  Less than human.

This evening, I read a column in my local newspaper.  (Yes, an actual newspaper, words on newsprint and delivered to the front door.)  The column, by Mark Shields, basically talked about the fact that every citizen of the United States (excluding those of Native American heritage) is descended from immigrants.  Shields goes on to say, "We Americans, all of us, are indeed either immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants, a truth that we can never forget--even if the man who sits in the Oval Office today has never learned it."

Yes, we all come from Queequegs.  Even Donald Trump.  At one time or another, our ancestors were probably feared and hated.  Maybe people even wanted to build a wall to keep us out.  Put us on boats to ship us back from whence we came.  We entered the United States under quotas.  Perhaps we sneaked across some border.  Stowed away on ocean liners.  We lied in order to gain entry.  We changed our names.

Donald Trump's mother immigrated to the United States from Scotland.  She was an illegal immigrant.  Donald Trump's father grew up in a house where German was the main language spoken.  Had her son been President when she was a girl, Mrs. Trump would probably have been deported.  Had his son been President when he was a young man, Trump's father, in the wake of World War II, would have been accused of being a Nazi spy and terrorist.  He would have been detained and jailed.

My point is simple:  what's going on in the United States right now is nothing new.  Each wave of immigrants faced bigotry, hatred, and suspicion.  Donald Trump is just capitalizing on old fears and prejudices.  He wants to send all of the Queequegs home because they are rapists and drug dealers and terrorists. It's an old story.

The problem is that we haven't learned any lessons from this old story.  It just keeps repeating.  Over and over and over.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for all immigrants, past and present, who've made the United States what it is today.