Homosexuality in Moby Dick

            Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is a fanatical and temerarious adventure about seamen engaging in a hunt for whales. Within this glorious adventure, homosexual relationships and sexual references are disguised in Melville's novel. This story is a vehicle for something entirely unrelated to the surface meanings in his novel. Also, it is full of sexual imagery. Melville uses symbolic themes, metaphors and double entendres to expose homosexuality. This seafaring voyage metaphorically symbolizes Ishmael's sexual liberty for homoerotic bonds. .
             Ishmael's sexuality is expressed in the social and homoerotic bonds between men. In chapter 94, "A Squeeze of the Hand", the hunting and harvesting of whales promotes explicit homosexual connotations: Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! All morning the morning long; I squeezed the sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such abounding, affectionate, friendly, lovely feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much to say-Oh! my dear fellows why should we longer cherish any acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor envy! (322-323).
             The language used here is symbolic: sperm is the representation of masculinity. In this context, the sperm represents the men engaging in an intimate act. Ishmael's mind is in the gutter. He is fervently excited from the idea of wallowing in the whale's sperm. More importantly, he feels an erotic brotherhood with the other seamen around him. These men are participating in a physical act which suggests a sexual performance. We are not sure if the seamen are masturbating themselves or one another. Still, this is an ecstatic experience for Ishmael from the lusty and pleasurable tone.