Yojo and Tangaroa
17 Friday Oct 2014
Posted in Literature, Uncategorized
Tags
Antebellum, Antebellum Literature, Cook Islands, Herman Melville, Ishmael, Literature, Melville, Moby Dick, Queequeg, Rarotonga, Religion, Tangaroa, Yojo
Wooden carving from Rarotonga 18th-19th century depicting Tangaroa, British Museum
Queequeg and his religion, especially that relating to his wooden idol Yojo, fascinated me for numerous reasons. After various research, I have been able to assume that Queequeg came from a fictionalized version of the Cook Islands, specifically the primary island Rarotonga, as his native home has been called Rokovoko or Kokovoko by Ishmael. Islanders believed in mythology and various gods for their religion prior to the mass conversion done by Christian missionaries. One of the main gods for the Cook Islanders was Tangaroa, the god of the sea. The name Tangaroa (along with a few various spellings) can be viewed widely across South Pacific Islands as the god of heaven and sea. He is viewed as the opposite of Tane, god of land, and is thus viewed on equal status. Tangaroa is also considered the father of many sea creatures, which most likely includes the whale. Pictured above is a small wooden idol discovered on the island of Rarotonga from the 18th-19th century, now displayed in the British Museum. The idol bears strong resemblance to Yojo, including how the idol has been tattooed.
Works Cited
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 2nd ed. Ed. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Print.
Hmm! This makes me think of a suggestion by one of your classmates that perhaps Queequeg is a figure of the reader within this text, an optimal reader, perhaps Melville’s fantasy of the type of sympathetic, but nevertheless Other, reader that Hawthorne would be? (Perhaps Ishmael, the writer, can only see this person “through the lines” that cover Queequeg’s face.) On this note, and bringing this together with your insights here, what would it mean to say that the foundations of the story lie in what the reader’s “idols” tell them? That these idols are the fathers of the “whale?”
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Excellent post! Melville was a brilliant writer. You might enjoy this video.
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