About this title: Misunderstood and unappreciated in its time, Melville's monumental work has become the classic epic of American literature. He tells the dual story of the initiation of young Ishmael, a schoolteacher, into the life of a seaman, and the tragedy of Captain Ahab's obsession with the white whale. The novel begins with a lengthy dissection of the word WHALE and its origins, and includes numerous citations about whales and the hunting of them, all taken from the extensive notes Melville accumulated during his research at the New York Public Library, and which he could not bear to leave out. After ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Publishing
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780766607194ISBN:0766607194
Description: Lauter, Richard. Very good in very good dust jacket. New condition, page edges fading, very slight coner bumps. Glued binding. 4 vols. 189 p. Contains: Illustrations. Treasury of Illustrated Classics. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780553213119ISBN:0553213113
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge and corner wear. Tight binding. Light corner creases on cover. Some notations on pages inside. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 670 p. Bantam Classic. Audience: Young adult. read more
Edition: Unabridged.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Airmont Publishing Company
Date Published: 1964
ISBN-13:9780804900331ISBN:0804900337
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Some edge and corner wear. Light cover creases. Tanned pages. Mass market (rack) paperback. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Nelson Doubleday, New York
Description: Poor. No dust jacket. Ex-library. Cover has heavy wear and has been taped, binding is slightly tilted, pages are unmarked except for library. 2 p.l., 324 p. 21 cm. The Prose and poetry individualized program. [The novel].. read more
"A lot of people can't understand Moby-Dick. And I think, to an extent, nobody can fully understand this book who doesn't know at least a little about the transcendentalist movement in American literature.
Transcendentalism, to Thoreau and Emerson, et al., was the idea that one can get to know God by studying nature. Thoreau was transcendentalism's greatest proponent. That's what 'Walden Pond' was all about.
Melville used Ahab and the whale to show (to put it as simply as possible) that one thing we learn when we study nature is that God isn't necessarily a creature we'd like to be closely acquainted with. When little Pip, the cabin boy, falls out of the whaleboat -- to take one example -- he sinks down and down, then he goes down a little farther, then farther still, and then he sinks some more until, bye and bye, he sank so far down in the ocean that he 'saw God's foot on the treadle of the loom.' At that point his mind snapped and when he finally broke surface, he was as crazy as a crap-house mouse. Having seen God, he became a madman, and his derangement was permanent.
Ahab is crazy because he, too, has met God -- and the damned thing took his leg off. He was not happy about losing his leg. He has sworn vengeance on God (manifest in the unstoppable power of the whale) and he will have it if it kills him -- as of course it finally does. Ahab's rage against God reflects the human creature's rage to order the insane universe (God) in which we live.
I mean, that vein is deep and rich. Moby-Dick gives us plenty of room to think and plenty of material to think about, and if we bother to think about it we'll be thinking for a long while. How about the scene where the men sit in a circle around a tub, squishing spermaceti between their fingers? Is there a circle-jerk going on there? Is there a hint at the homosexuality that was so common in all-male crews who spent months and years at sea?
In sum, I believe the novel has at least three purposes and at least two of those are didactic. On the one hand it discourses on transcendentalism, on the nature of God and the nature of man and the relationship between them. On the other hand, it discourses on the life of the whalers. We learn from reading Moby-Dick a very great deal about life and work on a wooden, wind-powered, Yankee whaling vessel. You can read it one way, you can read it the other way, or you can read it as a straight-up, meaningless adventure yarn. No matter how you read it, it's a whale of a tale and it's one that always yields more to those who re-read it.
I give it five stars because I think it earns every one of 'em."
"I first read this when I was nineteen; I did not enjoy reading it nearly so much as I enjoyed having read it. Every summer, a friend's daughter comes home from college, and together we read books she's interested in. This summer, she said she wanted to read MOBY DICK. I was not at all interested, but I'd never say no to a student who wants to read this book.
The past three weeks of reading have been unadulterated joy. The book: I get it, now, I finally get all the fuss. Harold Bloom says that reading is a solitary pleasure. That's true, but the bounty of goodreads has made it much less so. That said, one of the most thrilling moments in my reading life, ever, came an hour or so ago when, having finally spotted the white whale he'd searched three seas for, Ahab shouted, "Thar she blows!"
There is nothing left to be said about this book, nothing I can add. But it truly is an amazing, amazing work of fiction."
One of the most challenging and most intense novels to which I have ever put my mind. Over the course of reading this book, I encountered resistance. When I said I was reading it, someone responded, "On purpose?" Just today, finishing it in a cafe, a couple sitting across from me spoke of the book to each other. "Have you read Moby Dick?" asked the girl. "I tried but it didn't do it for me," said the guy. Who are these people.
Maybe I'm a literary snob. I don't think that's such a bad thing. If you don't become ill at the state of modern "popular" fiction, sometimes called literature but resoundingly far from it, you have not given enough time to exploring how things once were; how dedicated writers were to creating an experience; a time when craft reigned. After reading Moby Dick, I'm just dumbstruck as to what passes for literature these days.
But then maybe people don't want to be challenged anymore. Maybe books have become as much a diversion as television. Sure, books are meant to be a diversion; they are meant to be enjoyable and to pass the time in a pleasant way. Otherwise, why read? But Moby Dick is more than that and literature should be more than that. Books should change you and open you up and free you. Modern fiction is little more than reality tv. Why else would the modern reader be so obsessed with both the non-fiction and fiction memoir? We want to escape but not be challenged. We pick up a book like Moby Dick, feel pressured by it to think, and put it right back down.
Moby Dick is the American epic. There is nothing even close to it. If you think you know of a book that can rival it, let me read it and prove you wrong. This is the novel that all other novels should strive to be in spirit. How can these people turn it away?
Go back to your Palahniuks and Lethams and Eggers and everything else masquerading as something important. Don't give Moby Dick a chance, don't open your eyes, and relax deep into your easy-chair of mediocrity. Moby Dick is difficult. Moby Dick is something you won't fully understand when you try to read it in high school, in college, in your formative years, in your later years. It is something that needs multiple readings and needs to be read at a time in your life when you are most susceptible to the truths it entails. It deserves to be read now and forever.
We all have a White Whale we are chasing. The question is whether or not one may ever truly recognize it."
"Everyone's heard of this book. And a lot of people have started it. But read the whole thing to the bitter end? I'm convinced that the people who have achieved this accomplishment did so because they had the book assigned for some literature class.
Why do so many literature classes assign Moby Dick? I'm sure that it is because the book figures so prominently on so many lists of "Great Books of Western Literature". And why is it on so many lists of "Great Books"? Well, after reading the whole thing, I've decided that it must be that the people who compile those lists don't actually read the books on them; they just copy someone else's list.
Because, really, Moby Dick is not that great of a book. It cries out for editing - very heavy editing. The problem is, though, that if Herman Melville were to submit his book to any modern-day editor, I'm sure it would be rejected for publication. It is a wacky combination of adventure novel, non-fiction treatise on whales, and morality story. Unfortunately, it manages to come up short on all three. With prudent editing, it might make a compelling short story. My edition of the book ran for 135 chapters and over 800 pages.
We've all heard how Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab and his quest for the White Whale. With a book published in 1851 that no one really wants to read to the end anyway, I think I can be forgiven for including spoilers in this review. If you want to read this without having the end spoiled, well, stop reading here, and go knock yourself out - I'm sure your local library's copy is not checked out.
The narrative finally meandered to the bit about Captain Ahab and his failed whale hunt at Chapter 133. That's right - we have 132 chapters of exposition. Tedious, tedious exposition, long on minute details and Weird Portents (a la Shakespeare). In fact, Melville seems to have forgotten sometimes that he was writing a novel, because he writes some of his chapters with stage directions, just like Shakespeare. The narrative point of view is first person, from that famous first line, "Call me Ishmael", but, again, Melville seems to have forgotten himself (although with a novel this long, I can understand his wandering attention. I know my attention wandered while I was reading this bloated carcass of a novel). The narrator relays the inner thoughts of characters who are all alone, and of events that he didn't witness firsthand. Stereotypes are broad and offensive to modern readers, although I suppose in 19th century America, they were typical enough.
But it is not only as an adventure story that Moby Dick disappoints. Melville spends the bulk of his book discussing all aspects of whales, mostly based on his own experience, I suppose, but not really well-researched or fact-checked. There is a chapter on pictures of whales, and how most artists made mistakes in their depictions. Then a chapter on carvings of whales, and how many of these are flawed as well. The gross external anatomy of the sperm whale is described ad nauseam, with a chapter on the eye, and anther on the ear, and another on the forehead, and another on the skin, and another on the tail, et cetera. Through it all, Melville insists that, scientific opinion be damned, whales are a type of fish. While the book does give fascinating details on how a whaling ship of the mid-1800's functioned, it is not a reliable source for actual facts about whales.
And then, as our literature classes love to point out, there is the moral theme of Moby Dick. Melville opines that there are good and bad reasons to hunt and kill whales. The bad reason, as demonstrated by Captain Ahab, is personal vengeance. His monomania regarding hunting down and killing this particular whale is his madness and his downfall. Whaling is a tremendously dangerous pursuit, and loss of life and limb is to be expected. Whaling is supposed to be a noble calling and the only valid reason to hunt the whales, therefore, is the obscene profit that can be made by doing so. What kind of stupid moral lesson is that?
In any event, after 816 pages of this, we get down to it. Moby Dick is a legendary whale that has been hunted for years but never killed, and has a reputation for not only getting away, but also causing death and loss of limb for those who attempt to engage him. At the end, after being chases and tormented for three days, the whale turns on his hunters and destroys their ship. Everyone drowns except for our narrator. There is no reason given why he should be the only one spared - his behavior was no more exemplary or moral than his shipmates - he just happened to get lucky.
One thing that did surprise me in this book was the overt homosexuality among the main characters. Early on, Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed in an inn, and by morning have become intimate, with Ishmael infatuated with the cannibal. Late in the book, there is a declaration of love from Ahab to his first mate, Starbuck, which intrudes unexpectedly. I'm not making this up; check this out:
"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw - thou know'st what, in one another's eyes."
This being a Victorian novel, we are spared explicit scenes, but there seems not to be a heterosexual character populating these pages. If you are tempted to pick up the book to satisfy your prurient curiosity, help yourself. I'll bet, though, you give up on it before you reach the end."
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