Script+and+Analysis

Race, Ethnicity, Diversity Script Scene 1

Landlord: “But a vast, you haint no objections to sharing a harpooner’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”

Ishmael: “I don’t usually like to sleep two in a bed. It depends on who the harpooner might be, and that if you do not have another place for me. But I wouldn’t want to wander the streets of a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s blanket.’

Landlord: “My boy, you’ll have the nightmare to a dead certainty.”

Ishmael: Landlord, that ain’t the harpooner, is it?

Landlord: “Oh, no, the harpooner is a dark complex'd chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t- he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ‘em rare.

Ishmael: (act suspicious of the dark complex’ man): ponder “Landlord, I shan’t sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.”

Landlord: “Just as you please; im sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it’s a plauguy rough board here” (feel the notches and knots of bench) “ But wait a bit Skirmshander; I’ve got a carpenters plane there in the bar- wait I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.”

Ishmael: “Landlord! What sort of a chap is he? Does he always keep such late hours?”

Landlord: “No, generally he’s an early bird. Early to bed, early to rise, but tonight he went out a peddling, you see, maybe he can’t sell his head.”

Ishmael: “Can’t sell his head? What sort of bamboozling story is this you are telling me?” (Start to get a little angry) “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooner is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?”

Landlord: “that’s precisely it, and I told him he couldn’t well it here, the markets overstocked.”

Ishmael: “With what?”

Landlord: “With heads to be for sure. Ain’t there too many heads in the world?”

Ishmael: “I tell you landlord, you’d better stop spinning that yarn to me. I’m not green.”

Landlord: “May be not” (with a tooth pick in mouth) “But I rather guess you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooner hears you a slanderin’ his head.”

Ishmael: “Ill break it for him.”

Landlord: “It’s broke already.”

Ishmael: “Broke, broke do you mean? Landlord, landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed. You tell me you can only give me half of one, that the other half belongs to a certain harpooner. And about this harpooner, whom I have not see yet, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling toward the man whom you design as my bedfellow. I know demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooner is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him, and in the first place you will be so good as to unsay the story about selling his head, which if true I take to bee good evidence that the harpooner is stark mad, and I’ve no idea of sleeping with a mad man. And you sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.” (In a calm voice)

Landlord: “Wall, that’s a party long sermon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooner I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of “blamed New Zealand heads, great curios you know, and he’s sold all of ‘em but one, and that one he’s been trying to sell tonight, cause tomorrow’s Sunday, and it would not do to be selling human heads about the streets when folks is goin to churches. He wanted to last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the earth like string of onions.

Ishmael: “Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooner is a dangerous man.”

Landlord: “he pays regular, but some, it’s a nice bed. Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. Plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed. It’s an almighty big bed that.”

(They go upstairs to the room)

Landlord: “There make yourself comfortable now and good night to ye.”

Scene 2

(The next morning)

Ishmael: (waking up, feeling strange because queequegs’s arm was around him.) “Queequeg!”

Queequeg: snore

Ishmael: (rolling over) “Queequeg, in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!”

Queequeg: “Grunt” (draw arm away, and sit up in bed. Stare at Ishmael, and rub eyes not knowing how Ishmael got there.)

Scene 3

Queequeg: “are we again going to be bedfellows?”

Ishmael: “Yes, where at? Would you like to smoke?”

Queequeg: (puff’s then passes a pipe regularly between the two.) (Press forehead against Ishmaels grab him around the waist) “Now we are married”

Both: Go down stairs and eat supper, then have another social chat and smoke, then go back to their room.

Queequeg: (pull out a tobacco wallet, and draw out $30 in silver, then separating it into two equal piles, and push it towards Ishmael.) “This is for you”

Scene 4

Ishmael: (pushing a wheelbarrow with a poor carpet bag, and Queequegs canvas sack and hammock.)

Random people: (stare at Ishmael for being so close to Queequeg)

Queequeg: (stop to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs)

Ishmael: “why do you carry such a troublesome thing with you ashore, and do all whaling ships find their own harpooners?”

Queequeg: “This harpoon was well tried in many combats, and is deeply intimate with the hearts of whale.”

Bumpkin: “Captain! Captain!” (Running toward the officer) “Captain! Captain, here’s the devil.” Captain: “Hallow, you sir, what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you know you might have killed that chap?”

Queequeg: “What him say?” (Turning toward Ishmael)

Ishmael: “He said that you came near killed that man there!” (Pointing at bumpkin)

Queequeg: “Kille, ah! Him bevy smalle fishe, Queequeg no kille so smalle fishe, Queequeg kille big whale!”

Captain: “Look you ill kille you, you cannibal, if you try any more of your tricks aboard here, so mind your eye.”

[The strain upon the mail sail had parted the weather sheet, and was now flying from side to side knocking bumpkin overboard. Everyone panics]

Queequeg: (crawling under the path of the boom, grabbed hold of the rope, secured one end, flinging the other like a lasso catching the other. Strip to waist, and leap into water. Swim like a dog. Then dive down and disappear. Come up with one arm around bumpkin. Get back on boat]

[Bumpkin is revived]

Everyone (not Queequeg): clap and cheer for Queequeg.

Captain: I am very sorry, do you accept my apology?”

Queequeg and Ishmael: [ignore him. And Ishmael hangs close to Queequeg]