Who narrates "Moby-Dick"?

Moby-Dick is narrated by Ishmael. He tells the story in the first person, beginning with his decision to leave land and seek a life at sea.

Ishmael joins the whaling ship Pequod after traveling from Manhattan to New Bedford and then Nantucket. He becomes friends with Queequeg, a harpooner, and observes Captain Ahab’s increasingly obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick. Ishmael is often an observer rather than the central actor, allowing the novel to expand into reflections on whaling, religion, science, society, and fate.

The narrator should not be confused with Herman Melville, the author, even though Ishmael’s experiences draw partly on Melville’s own time at sea. Nor is Ishmael the same as Ahab, whose quest supplies the main dramatic conflict. At the end of the novel, Ishmael is the sole survivor of the Pequod’s destruction and therefore the person able to tell the tale.