Is Ishmael a Stoic? Ahab certainly isn't.

I've been noticing in my reading several references to Stoicism is the text. The first is the passage Alison already quoted, about suicide: "With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword, I quietly take to the ship." Cato was a Stoic, and Stoicism premits suicide in cases where you cannot live a flourishing life (human flourishing, or eudaimonia, being the goal of Stoic, and in fact all ancient Greek, ethics). Just a few paragraphs later in Loomings we get this: "The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it." "Grin and bear it" is a somewhat cartoony description of the Stoic philosophy, but I think it's interesting that Ishmael thinks you need a Stoic disposition to survive a whaling voyage.
The Stoics thought that our passions kept us from flourishing; we want things that we can't have, or aren't meant to have. Instead, we should control our passions through use of our rationality; the more rational we are, the more we can come to recognize what things are appropriate for us "according to our natures"--that is, things like food and shelter. (And it's the recognition that things like food and shelter are what's appropriate for us, rather than the attainment of food and shelter, that's essential for eudaimonia.)
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Stoicism:

The passions or pathê are literally ‘things which one undergoes’ and are to be contrasted with actions or things that one does. Thus, the view that one should be ‘apathetic,’ in its original Hellenistic sense, is not the view that you shouldn't care about anything, but rather the view that you should not be psychologically subject to anything—manipulated and moved by it, rather than yourself being actively and positively in command of your reactions and responses to things as they occur or are in prospect. It connotes a kind of complete self-sufficiency. 

 Which brings me to Ishmael's description of Queequeg in Chapter 10:

...and yet he seemed entirely at his ease, preserving the utmost serenity, content with his own companionship, always equal to himself. Surely this was a tough of fine philosophy, though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving.

On the one hand, he's saying that trying to live "philosophically" is incompatible with perfect contentment; on the other hand, I'm struck by the fact that it's the absence of striving that he's valuing here--exactly like the Stoics.
Maybe more interesting that Ishmael's possible Stoicism is Ahab's total lack of Stoic belief. The whole novel is about Ahab's passionate pursuit of Moby Dick. It's a book all about  a man who is "psychologically subject" to something outside of himself!
Hmmm, very interesting...