What is the name of the narrator in 'Moby-Dick'?

The narrator in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is Ishmael. The novel famously opens with the line “Call me Ishmael,” immediately establishing the voice through which the voyage is told.

Ishmael is a sailor who joins the crew of the Pequod, a whaling ship commanded by Captain Ahab. Ahab’s obsessive pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick drives the plot, but Ishmael remains the book’s observing, reflective consciousness. He describes the crew, the whaling industry, ocean life, and the symbolic meanings he finds in the voyage.

A common mix-up is to name Ahab, because Ahab is the novel’s most dramatic figure and central force of action. Ahab is the captain and the man seeking revenge; Ishmael is the first-person narrator who survives the Pequod’s destruction and recounts what happened. Ishmael is also a fictional character, not simply a direct stand-in for Melville, though readers have often compared the two.