Herman Melville: Moby-Dick

• ISBN-13: 9781411433656
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 6/1/2009
• Pages: 752

On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakable thirst for vengeance. Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale - Moby Dick. 
 On its surface, Moby-Dick is a vivid documentary of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, replete with facts, legends, and trivia that Melville had gleaned from personal experience and scores of sources. But as the quest for the whale becomes increasingly perilous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, moral consequence, good, evil, and life itself. Who is good? The great white whale who, like Nature, asks nothing but to be left in peace? Or the bold Ahab who, like scientists, explorers, and philosophers, fearlessly probes the mysteries of the universe? Who is evil? The ferocious, man-killing sea monster? Or the revenge-obsessed madman who ignores his own better nature in his quest to kill the beast? 
 Scorned by critics upon its publication, Moby-Dick was publicly derided during its author's lifetime. Yet Melville's masterpiece has outlived its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic of unquestionably epic proportions.

 What to say about a book that has become such a mammoth in the minds of all? It's a gargantuan tale; a whale of a tale, if you will. Okay, I'll stop with the bad puns, but I still stand by the fact that this novel is a hefty read for multiple reasons. Reason 1: sheer size. Melville is fairly prolific as a writer, but his most well-known book is obviously Moby Dick, and it's a long read. Reason 2: it gets tedious. Here was I, never having read or studied the novel, only having seen references to it in film and other novels, thinking that it was a story about a man and a whale and the undying enmity between them. I had enough knowledge of the novel, though, to know that there were chapters of plain whaling information. What I thought was a fictional novel with tangents into whaling factoids actually turned out to be a novel primarily centered on the art and lifestyle of whaling, with a story about a crazy guy chasing a whale thrown in. My mistake. That being said, there is a ridiculous amount of information on that subject. I could not recount a fraction of the information thrown at me. I found myself occasionally doing that most reprehensible of acts - reading a paragraph mindlessly, only to realize at the end that I had no recollection of what I had just read. Unfortunate, but true.
 Because there was hardly a plot to speak of, I'll be equally brief. Ahab had his leg torn off by Moby Dick - he wants revenge. And that's pretty much the point of the novel. Other than go-to whaling manual, there is very little substance to the pot. I would actually say that the novel is more of an observation on the nature of man than it is a novel of fiction.
What to say of characterization? Well, there wasn't much of it. You get to know Ishmael the most, and that's in the initial chapters. More is revealed in his first encounters with Queequeg than at any other time. Even though he's the narrator, he's pretty much invisible to the reader through the rest of the novel. We get to know Queequeg a little, but since it's only through the eyes of Ishmael, it's not that much when all is said and done. We get portraits of the mates and the other harpooners, and a few miscellaneous members of the crew, but these are also brief, barely taking up a chapter (and the chapters are tiny - some don't even cover a page). Finally, we have Ahab. The only thing we really know about him is that he's bat-shit crazy, but he hides it well unless you talk about Moby Dick, then he's all crazy-guns blazing. His first mate Starbuck seems to have the most interaction with his crazy, and you really get to feel for Starbuck. However, the dialogue is often really compounded soliloquies in high-flown language, so you don't feel like you're reading a conversation at all.
 The ending of the novel is sort of anti-climactic. I hope I'm not shocking anyone when I say that both Ahab and the whale die, but the way it is described is not as violent or impressive as one would suppose. The sinking of the ship is far more traumatic, I think, than the culmination and (questionable) success of the hunt. I will give Melville props, though, for language - he is a deep thinker and has quite a few quotable passages. Again, as I've said before, we simply don't use the English language to its full capacity anymore.
 My final comment is that, as a soul-searching project, it has immense power for looking into the human psyche and questioning certain values. Melville is infinitely successful in making you sympathize with the whale and question assumptions. As the summary above states, it is indeed an allegorical tale that, putting the whaling information aside, made me think a little harder about the relationship between man and Nature.
 Overall: B-
Mostly because of disappointed expectations and occasional incomprehensibility. It gets a boost from Melville's writing chops. It had its moments of fun and was definitely interesting, but overall I was looking for more of a work of fiction and less of a whaling how-to.