Moby Dick

Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick
Review: 'Call me Ishmael' - thus begins a novel that the author describes thus: 'It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.' Perhaps the first sentence is better known than the novel, perhaps not, but either way, Moby Dick is a sprawling epic on life in the 19th century, whaling, religion, good and evil, and more.

The story is familiar to even those who have never read it: The whaling ship, the Pequod, led by the obsessed, monomaniac Captain Ahab, are searching for the Great White Whale over the oceans of the world, in part to avenge the loss of one of Ahab's limbs, but also because some other force drives the Captain, a dark force to his mates, but to him, the obsession that pushes him to chase the whale over half the world is nothing short of divine.

The novel is broken into three rough sections. The first introduces us to Ishmael, and for the first hundred pages or so, we are firmly ensconced within his head, seeing what he sees, doing what he does. We meet Queequeg and board the Pequod, and for a time, all is calm, serene. The second section - called boring by many - focuses on the day-in day-out life of a whaling ship, with lengthy discourses on whales, how to kill them, the spermecetti that they produce, etc. In this day and age, with whaling illegal in most places - and even if it wasn't, the call for sperm oil has markedly decreased with the discovery of crude oil - the essays (as essays they are) on the facets of whaling life were interesting, if only because it is a life that neither you nor I will probably ever experience first hand.

The third section, the final hundred pages or so, is the final climactic struggle with the whale. Moby Dick himself does not actually appear until the last forty pages, but he hovers like a spectre throughout the entirety of the book, always there, present, waiting. For the more aware crew he is a shade over their heads, a folly they cannot understand. For the pagans on the ship, the whale is an adventure, a rollicking good time that could very well net them the gold doubloon Ahab has nailed to the main mast. But for the captain, it is an obsession that overshadows all else, often to the exclusion of another man's life. The final section of the book in punctuated with lengthy monologues from Ahab, detailed, insane ramblings of a man who believes that his ever action is foredained, that the clash between the whale and his harpoon has been decided a 'billion years ago'.

An interesting writing technique that Melville uses is having Ishmael slowly disappear over the course of the novel. At the start, he acts and reacts to events, speaks to people, visits places, but once the whaling begins, he assumes the task of learned scholar imparting his wisdom, lecturing on the ins and out of whales. By the time the hunt really begins, Ishmael hasn't been mentioned in hundreds of pages, becoming more of an omniscient narrator than a whaler on board the Pequod.

Many, many biblical and historical references are littered throughout the book. Many things have obvious symbolism, and with a greater knowledge of the Bible, I wouldn't be surprised if I would've picked up on more. At times, Ishmael will discuss the impact of whaling, the virtues of good and evil, the horrors of the colour white, and more; this is no simple book about a man chasing a whale. It has staggering depths and dizzying highs, and while only a very few characters have been fully fleshed out - though I dare say Ahab is one of the better characters I have read in recent memory - the book transcends a mere ship adventure, instead trying to - and in some ways, succeeding - encompass the entirety of morality and logic. Tremendous.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: A while back I started on an idea to read all the world's classic pieces of literature. Honestly, if I started with this book, I would've probably stopped reading forever.

I was under the impression that this was one of the better books ever written. To me, this isn't so much a story about an elusive, self-preserving whale who antagonized a crazy old captain on a quest for revenge, but as a 'how to' book on fishing whales. I was bored for most of the book, the ending was somewhat interesting, but was more of a relief than anything else...finally I could stop reading this book.

To each his own, maybe I didn't get this book and there really is something amazing in it...but I didn't see it. It was fun (and very dorky) to see the link of Star Trek 2 - The Wrath of Kahn to this book, but that was about it. Now when I'm chillin with my girl, forcing her to watch that old movie, I can sound smart and point out where some of those lines come from...Moby Dick. Other than that, I'm done with it. Good luck with this one.

Rating:
Summary: It really is worth reading
Review: About a year ago I was talking with a good friend about the books we'd each been reading recently, and the topic of Moby Dick came up. "What!" she exclaimed. "You've never read Moby Dick? You've got to read it! It's great! And it has all kinds of geeky stuff about ships and whaling that you'd like." I made some excuses about it being archaic but she browbeat me into agreeing to check it out.

I found a number of editions at the local bookstore but this edition, with the Rockwell Kent illustrations, caught my eye, so that's the one I bought. As I was paying for it the clerk at ther register said "That's my favorite book!" Maybe my friend was on to something after all.

I started reading it that evening, and you know what? This *is* a great book. The language may be a bit flowerly and long winded for those raised on post-modern New Yorker short stories, but it's a very vivid language that makes characters and scenes come alive. Melville's narration of both the external world of the shop and the internal world of the characters is compelling in a way that few if any modern authors can acheive.

Moby Dick is a classic for reasons that go beyond having been assigned as school reading since the beginning of time. If you never got beyond reading the Bartlett's Notes when Moby Dick was assigned to you in high school, this is as good a time as any to dive into the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick
Review: Long, yes. Difficult to understand, yes. Good, yes. To those who rated it one and two stars, go read your comic books.

Rating:
Summary: Be Prepared for a long sit...
Review: There are very few groups of people for which I would recommend this novel. Children and Young Adults interested in a gripping tale of Man against Nature will be sorely disappointed and just as the ship leaves the dock the reader will start finding any excuse to go do something else. For the adult reader who is just beginning their quest into literature, this is not the book to inspire you to keep reading. The successful reader will enjoy spending lots of time with a large dictionary looking up unfamiliar terms and taking copious notes on the jargon of whaling as it existed in the nineteenth century. This book does offer some wonderful language and a new viewpoint on life on a whaling ship of the period but most readers will not find the bulk of the text entertaining or even tolerable.

Rating:
Summary: Best long novel about a huge whale I ever read in bed
Review: However, I did not gain any weight. I recommend either "The South Beach Diet," or Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."

Rating:
Summary: Don't get bogged down in the middle. The end is worth it.
Review: The thing I always tell people about Moby Dick is that the beginning is lighthearted fun, the ending is amazing, and the middle is (to be blunt) quite dull. I think most people who make it to the end love the book, but getting there is a chore because Melville spends a great deal of time either talking about minutia of the whaling trade, or going off onto tangents almost in a stream of consciousness fashion that seem to have very little to do with the narrative (he devotes an entire chapter to telling why the color white is frightening, and another to listing characters from legend whom he identifies as whalers (Perseus I can see, but St. George?)). The language is gloriously poetic in places, but other times it rambles almost aimlessly and feels very convoluted and self-indulgent, even by 19th century standards. (Yes, I know these are qualities that the book's devotees hold dear, but they're also the reason that so many people never finish the thing. Might as well be honest about it.)

At the end, it's extremely disturbing getting into Ahab's head and understanding what makes him tick-disturbing because it's present in all of us, an instrinsic part of the human condition: his rage at not being God. Ahab is pride incarnate, with all the hatred that comes with it. (The story of Jonah, sermonized in the beginning, is ultimately one of the need for humility before God, with the whale as God's agent. And it's important that Jonah's sin is not merely disobedience but a refusal to go on a mission of mercy.). I felt unsettled for a long time after I read this, because it demonstrates what a short jump it is between a classically Satanic villain (a being of total pride and hate waging an all-destructive and ultimately futile war on God, and luring all others to follow him to damnation) to the modern concept of the existentialist hero, fighting bravely against hopeless odds. Seen through his own eyes, Ahab is genuinely heroic--and then the reader has to step back and realize that on the contrary, hatred has all but consumed Ahab's soul, leaving the Rachel without help and leading his crew to death for his own pride's sake. If to understand is to approve, the reader who now understands Ahab is left asking, "Good God, what kind of person am I?" Today we tend to view pride as a virtue rather than a vice; what does that make any of us?

Needless to say, there's a lot there. It wasn't until years after I'd read the book that I'd sorted it out enough in my mind to feel that I finally "got it," and I'm still in the process of getting it. Everything in Moby Dick is a symbol, and I suppose that no two people completely agree on what the symbols represent (Melville surely wanted a degree of ambiguity, anyway). Here are my own opinions on what it all means: (spoiler warning)

The whale represents God.
The crew is mankind.
Queequeg, Dagoo, and Tashtego are the pagan nations of the Earth, willing to literally worship Ahab.

Starbuck is Christendom.
Ishmael and the rest of the crew are godless men of no religion, whose anchorless wills are overwhelmed by Ahab's own.
Elijah is a prophet.
Ahab is the Antichrist.
Fedallah is Satan, and his attendants are demons.

Even though Queequeg is one of the pagans, it is through his seeming death and resurrection midway through the novel that Ishmael lives--because of the coffin. And Starbuck, innocent of any crime, goes down with the ship anyway (giving Ahab pause, just before his own death, to essentially stop and say in horror, "What have I done?")

I'm not sure what Pip represents.

If you're buying a paperback, I'd recommend the Tor edition, (ISBN 0812543076) just because I think it's got a very nice cover painting, something publishers often don't bother with when reprinting a "classic."

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Summary: The Hyena
Review: Sitting in a small room overlooking Mount Graylock on his farm in Pittsfield, Mass, Herman Melville was a magician. There are no words to describe the ineffable, and Moby Dick is *the* novel for anyone who has ever been on a quest; anyone who has wanted to know something that loomed just out of sight.

Sure, Ahab hunts the whale...but these chapters pale in comparison to Ishmael's own quest: knowing what the whale is. He is the greatest narrator in the history of fiction. The two chapters: "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "Moby-Dick" are matchless, as are "The Hynea" and the humorous "Bower in the Arsicades." One can envision Ishmael covered in tatoos of the whale's dimensions.

Is Moby-Dick tedious? Only if you're reading it as cetology. But as allegory, it is a tale of limitless drive--even self-consuming drives.

Best book ever...

Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick is a classic
Review: Way ahead of its time...funny, irreverant.
Not what I expected at all.

Rating:
Summary: Classic for Contemplation
Review: Moby Dick could easily be broken into parts and studied over a full semester in a college class and still that would only break the surface - and that is how it should be approached by the reader as well, I think. This is not like a Steinbeck or Dickens novel which can be thoroughly enjoyed without necessarily interpreting it. The whole point of Moby Dick is the search for the deeper meaning - by its characters and by its readers. Let me put it this way - if only the "action sequences" of the actual search for the whale where cut out and put together as the only part of the story, it might be 50 pages instead of over 500. Maybe 150 pages, but you get my point.

Told from the perspective of one of his crew, the Pequod sets off on a whaling voyage under the enigmatic Captain Ahab. Ahab, maimed by the white whale on his previous voyage, has sworn himself to vengeance on the whale. He proves an inspiring captain in the beginning and the crew takes an oath to find Moby Dick with him. But as the omens mount up and additional reports of the whale's ferocity, it becomes clear that this obsession could take everyone to their grave and that Ahab would have his vengeance even at that expense.

There is no doubt in reading this that it is a masterpiece and, overall, I enjoyed it. I found it very slow going though. There are a couple of reasons for this, I think. One, most of the chapters are very short - maybe one or two pages in some cases - so I stopped reading more often than I normally would. Secondly, Melville digresses from the actual story line of Ahab numerous times to go into depth on the types of whales there are, what pictures/paintings of them have been made throughout time and how close to reality they are, why the industry of whaling should be considered more glorious and honorific, how the whale line is secured, and specific anatomical descriptions of the whale's head, spout, flukes, etc. This occurs more in the first half than the second so, naturally, the first part seemed a lot slower (I also nodded off quite a bit in the first part). However, all of this is necessary for the proper interpretation and experience of the novel - they aren't side rants!

I was surprised to find so much humor in the book, both situational comedy and literary sarcasms. On the allegorical level, I don't think I can fully grasp the whole scale in one reading. There is a whole chapter on the significance of Moby Dick being white but there was also a sentence in there poking fun at those that would attach too much meaning. Amid constant references to the deity like qualities of the white whale, I at times was not sure if the whale personified God or the Devil.