“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville (post 2): Why does Ishmael occasionally address himself in the third-person? What does he mean by “Call me Ishmael”?

My previous post on Melville discussed the multiple personality in his novel The Confidence-Man. I have just started Moby-Dick, and am struck by Ishmael’s recurrent habit of addressing himself in the third person. The following example is from Chapter 10, in which Ishmael (first-person narrator) and Queequeg become friends.

“I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth — pagans and all included — can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship? — to do the will of God? — to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me — that is the will of God. Now, Queegueg is my fellow man” (1, p. 96).

Is Ishmael being addressed by an alternate personality? Or does the author have multiple personality, and so thinks of being addressed in the third-person by an alternate personality as just ordinary psychology? Or is it merely a way to remind the reader of the name of the narrator? Or is it typical of most people to speak to themselves in the third person when they are thinking about something (and so these occasional switches to third-person are simply designed to help the reader identify with the narrator)?

“Call me Ishmael”

Reconsider the novel’s famous first line: “Call me Ishmael.” Is that spoken by an alternate personality who has a different name than “Ishmael”?

Does he mean, “My real name is not Ishmael. But what my real name is, is for me to know and you to find out; or, I hope, for you not to find out. So you can just call me ‘Ishmael.’ That’s what I always tell people”?

1. Herman Melville. Moby-Dick, or The Whale [1851]. London, Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2016.