Moby Dick

by Herman Melville

Though it has been called America’s greatest novel, Moby Dick was not a fun book to read. I read it immediately after Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., hoping to prolong the enjoyable sea-going adventure aboard a merchant ship in the 1800’s. Moby Dick is more a novel about a ship’s captain gone mad than it is a book about life aboard a ship.

Certainly, most of the book does take place aboard a whaling ship, also in the 1800’s. The narrator, Ishmael, a deck hand, is ultimately the sole survivor of the ill-fated voyage of revenge. He tells us much more than we ever wanted to know about whales and whale fishing. These descriptions of the leviathans of the sea, the hunting, the butchering, and the rendering of the blubber into whale oil, are among the most enjoyable chapters in the book.

Also of interest are some of the portraits of the characters, notably those of Queequeg, the cannibal-turned-harpooneer, and the brief, but well-told, encounter with the blacksmith (Ch. 112). One has to read through forty percent of the book before the crew meets its first whale (Ch. 47). Before we get to meet Moby Dick, we have to read through ninety-five percent of the book (Ch. 133). The first officer, Starbuck, has a great scene in the previous chapter (132), with Captain Ahab, in which he nearly persuades him to give up this mad hunt and "let us home! Wife and child … let us away!"

Too late. Captain Ahab feels he must put an end to this white-headed whale that was responsible for the loss of his leg in an earlier encounter. He is too far gone in his madness, and the appearance of the white whale seals their fate. After three days of lowering their boats to capture it, the whale ultimately rams the Pequod, sinking it to the loss of all hands, save Ishmael, including those in the whale boats that get sucked into the whirlpool made by the sinking mother ship. Ishmael is found floating atop the coffin that Queequeg had the carpenter make for him in an earlier chapter when he feared he would die of illness.

It was a terrible ending, but it was a relief to be done with such a dark story of a madman driving his crew to his insane obsession with taking revenge on a dumb beast. Melville tells the story in a very classic style, using allegory to an extraordinary degree throughout the book. It is truly a story told with richness and talent. You might like it better than I did.

© 1996 Herman Fontenot

This amateur takes no responsibility for the content or availability of any of these references, nor does he necessarily agree with the viewpoints expressed.

Moby Dick – The Whale
A more positive presentation of this great work.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page