#fedallah

[pocketsizedquasar-3]

7 for Fedallah 👀👀

only the carob tree will keep me company; oh bitter friend, oh beloved enemy 🌊

[ID: A digital drawing of Fedallah from Moby Dick standing under a carob tree. He is holding a harpoon and looking down with a somber expression; the line from the harpoon traces a circle around his feet where he stands before trailing off. The leaves of the tree above him fade above into the ocean, with the Pequod and a small whaleboat with Ahab, Fedallah, and their oarsmen in it. Handwritten text throughout the piece reads, “I am out of time; I am out of favor; I am but a cipher / I am the circle maker / praying for the rain, then paying for the prayer / begging for a sign that I was ever even there / How strange I am to all.”

Fedallah is a thin, middle aged Persian man with light brown skin and a beard and mustache. He is wearing a white turban and white tunic, along with purple pants, and a knee brace on his right knee. End ID.]

thank u beloved for the request!!

Spotify Wrapped! #7 was The Circle Maker by @sparkbirdmusic !!! and AAAAAAAA OUGHFHFHFH HELLOOO. this song was already on my “Ahab and Pip” playlist (and my not yet made "songs that perceive me too hard" playlist lmao) but it’s also SUCHHH a my Fedalah song i cant believe i didn't put it on his playlist before. this has been since been rectified but oh my god 😭😭 it was so hard picking specific lyrics to use in this piece; aside from the ones i used, other contenders were the caption lines, and "not a soul, not a soul will meet my gaze or greet me/and the carob tree's brittle leaves rattle hoarsely on the wind"

anyway. the art's been done for a while and i've been meaning to post it all week but i kind of waffled back and forth on which lyrics to use and the placement of them so. here we are now. happy new year. read my moby dick webcomic. cry about fedallah with me. free palestine

[mercury50]

RIP Ishmael, you would've loved Urban Dictionary, Sufjan Stevens, and Heartstopper

RIP Ahab, you would've loved moveable prosthetics, Life360, and anger management classes

RIP Starbuck, you would've loved the DSM-5, HR, and the phrase "shut the fuck up"

RIP Stubb, you would've loved ASMR YouTube channels, brain rot humor, and starting flame wars on Twitter

RIP Flask, you would've loved platform boots, saying "bro it's not that deep", and prepackaged sticks of salted butter

RIP Fedallah, you would've loved the gift of prophecy awarded to people on tumblr, not having a phone, and 2020 COVID lockdown

RIP Queequeg, you would've loved Obergefell vs. Hodges, sweatpants, and having personal beef with the Duolingo owl

RIP Tashtego, you would've loved cotton candy vape, trolling people on the internet, and calling things "white people nonsense"

RIP Daggoo, you would've loved not playing basketball (out of spite), offering "uppies", and work visas

RIP Pip, you would've loved child labor laws, kazoos, and water wings

[evyiart]

Hey Moby D tumblr I am working on smth

(This is the line art)

(Dosto tumblr i promise i will make Dostoevsky fan art again i just am obsessed w this book ITS REALLY GOOD DOSTOEVSKY WOULD HAVE LIKED IT PLS READ IT 🙏)

[mossy-rainfrog]

[ID: A digital drawing of Ahab's boat crew on a whalehunt, headed by Fedallah, and oared by several other men. The perspective is right before the bow of the rowboat, in the splash of the water as Fedallah crouches, holding his harpoon, and looking ahead with a focused expression. Several men man the oars, one looking ahead just like Fedallah, and one looking back at Ahab in the back of the boat, who mans the steering and points ahead, crying out for a whale. Behind them, the Pequod can be seen at a distance over the blue ocean against a pink and purple sky.

Character designs: Fedallah is a lean, older Persian man dressed in Zoroastrian white with a wrap over his hair. He has a thin mustache and short beard. Ahab is a chubby middle-aged Persian man with short, curly hair, and wearing a maroon coat. There are three visible oarsmen: all three are younger Filipino men of varying hair lengths, facial hair styles, and skin tones. They are all wearing various shades of purple. End ID.]

CATEGORY TEN FEDALLAH MOMENT. I haven't posted nearly enough Fedallah art on here, so enjoy some boys on a whalehunt :) i love the colors of this one.

designs are, as always, borrowed from the lovely @pocketsizedquasar-3 :3

[ambigg]

starbuck, pip

these two are probably the easiest to draw

[saltavenegar]

!!PEOQUOD LINEUP!!

or as many of them as I could reasonably fit

[would-they-give-the-death-note]

And the Sequel!

Would Fedallah (from Moby Dick) Give The Death Note To Ahab (also from Moby Dick)?

Yep!

No, it wouldn't be interesting.

No, Ahab can't be trusted with it.

No, Fedallah would be using it.

I don't know.

Who?

Voting ended onJun 19, 2025

Mod Note:

I wanted blood I wanted black and white Clear-cut Your evils predefined Your evils predefined

Hold on tight My compass is curiosity My compass is curiosity I'm piercing through the rope that strangled you and me Let us be free

[probably-an-alien]

Here's what bugs me about chapter 99 "The Dubloon":

Stubb's perspective is a really interesting device through wich to show other characters' interpretations and I can appreciate what Melville did with that to some degree. However I am still angry that we don't get to see, what Queequeg and Fedallah think about the coin, because Stubb, who is a racist asshole, is blocking the way. The goddamn old Manxman, who by comparison is so much less important of a character, get's his own little monologue, but Queequeg and Fedallah don't get to say a single word.

I feel like we were robbed of two extremely interesting perspectives here.

About Queequeg we at least get to know what he's physically doing, if not what he thinks. He seems to be comparing something about the coin to his tattoos. Stubb of course dismisses this as some kind of superstition and even supposes that Queequeg doesn't really know what a coin is (??????? wtf Stubb!?).

In actuality, what Queequeg is doing isn't even that dissimilar from Stubb's hermeneutics. Both of them try to decifer the coin's meaning by consulting some kind of document as a frame of reference. In Stubb's case that's his almanac and the Massachusetts calendar, but for Queequeg it's his tattoos.

I wish we could have known, what they mean and what Queequeg sees in that coin, but alas, this book and Stubb refuse to tell us. Queequegs thoughts remain a mystery most times just like his tattoos.

And then there's Fedallah.

I could rant for hours about how shittily the entire narrative and all the other characters treat him and this chapter is exemplary of that.

The first thing Stubb does upon seeing Fedallah come up to the dubloon is call him a "ghost-devil" and speculate on how he's supposedly hiding his devil's tail and hooves. We get to know that Fedallah "makes a sign to the sign and bows himself", but Stubb doesn't seem to know that gesture and therefore doesn't care to describe it any further, explaining it away as just some weird thing he does because he's a "fire worshipper" (as far as I know a wildly incorrect term for Zoroastrians) and the're a sun on the coin.

It's wild to me that we do not get even the slightest real glimpse into Fedallah's mind here. He is probably the one person on the ship who gets the most insight into Ahab's thoughts and feelings. He's closest to Ahab and he knows what is going on inside the captain's head and what fate the ship is heading towards. That coin on the mast that signifies Ahab's mission must mean something to him. I bet he has so many interesting thoughts about it and about Ahab, but all we get is Stubb's racist superstitions.

And really, this is what the entire book is like, concerning this character. Fedallah does nothing objectively wrong, but the rest of the crew constantly regard him with suspicion, going so far as to claim he's the literal devil and the narrative pretty much never lets the man speak for himself about what he thinks of all this.

As you might have guessed, I'm pretty angry about this, because I think there's so many missed opportunities here and they just get thrown overboard because Stubb (the crew, Ishmael as a narrator, the entire narrative) can't be normal about non-white characters.