Rating: 
Summary: Half story/half textbook
Review: Moby Dick is a classic, of course, and for good reason. The story is an exciting one, and the theme is complex. Symbolism abounds, which makes this an excellent book for anyone to study. However, my review does not end there. Had Moby Dick been just a story, I would have enjoyed it. It was not just a story. Instead, half of the book was devoted to educating the reader on whale anatomy and whaling. Frankly, I don't really need or want to know anything about either of these subjects. I could have gotten just as much out of the book if Melville would have briefly explained how the whalemen extracted the oil from the whale, instead of devoting entire chapters to discussing each part of the process. The last three chapters of the book were good, and scattered chapters in the middle were also good. Unfortunately, that is all I can say about what a "great classic" this is. I gave 3 stars for the story-telling sections, but I took away 2 stars for the te! xtbook sections.
Rating: 
Summary: I am glad I read Moby Dick, but it isn't what I expected.
Review: To ask someone who has never read Moby Dick what they think it is about, they would probably tell you what I used to think, "It is about a white whale.". Surprisingly, very few of the numerous chaptors were devoted to that particular leviathon. Instead, Moby Dick himself is the climax of a book that puts you on the ocean in the mid-19th century with a rather interesting crew and captain. You do not only read about a singular chase of a brutal (not all white) beast, you learn what whales are made of (at least what they knew back then), how the crew was hired and paid, the complete workings of the ship from the owners down to the carpenter, and how dangerous a vocation this really was. Symbolism abounds, and quite honestly I ignored most of it and chose instead to just enjoy the scenery. Take what you will, but Moby Dick is well worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough but not recommendable
Review: I've read a lot of classics so far, and I could say I'm a good enough reader. But Moby Dick, sheesh, it really challenged me. It's awfully dragging- Melville should just have chopped off, say, 400 pages or so of it? The end was the only real exciting part, so read Moby Dick if you must, just remember to have a dictionary handy.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the greatest novels of all time
Review: This is, without a doubt, one of the greatest novels I have ever read. The prose is majestic and the theme is timeless. An literary achievement of Himalayan magnitude.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes the classics are the best choose...
Review: I think the first pages are very funny, maybe the funniest begining I've never read. At same time, it is the perfect resume of the book, a resume about "how to live your own life". Like in many other classic-books (Treauser Island of course), the author show you thinks like the walk of life (the journey on the ship, the sea) the fate (the white whale), the friendship (Quequeeeq, you have to read the first time Ismael show him), the stupid and nonsense hate (Ahab),etc... And the author do this with an accurate style, whit humour but with a complete and exact construction of the actors, the sea, the whales, the hunting,... You have to read if you like the sea, the adventures and to live your own life. I recommend this classic.
Rating:
Summary: A gold mine for the imagination
Review: Savor this book like a rich dessert. Read it slowly, like poetry. An epic tragedy that is either loved or loathed, it may speak best to those who have known obsession, those who divine the many biblical allusions scattered through the pages and those who have an ear for the dated cadences of 19th Century prose. The reader can't help but be awed by the maniacal Captain Ahab, who challenges God and nature, casts away all navigational aids, forges his own compass and ultimately relies only on his own cunning and instinct to search the untracked seas for the one thing in the world that consumes him, the White Whale. The imagery is rich. At one point Melville describes a deathly still sea as a great magnifying glass and the sun overhead as the searing point of light gathered and focused by that glass. A gold mine for the imagination, this book can be read once as a tragic quest, once as a work of poetry and once again as a huge metaphor or allegory. This book is like a deep pool that reflects back whatever is lurking in the reader's heart. Beware and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick:an interactive book
Review: Well, so I had to read (in English, a foreing language for me!) a book which lasted for more than eight hundred pages. Slightly scary, I may say, especially when the average number of books this year were 13. Well, indeed some parts of the novel are simply delightful. Any reference to the cultural clash with Queequeg, or any description of the landscape, the sea, the people, were delightful. And then, in the middle -yes, encyclopaedia entries. "It's a bit misleading,Mr. Melville, what the h. do you want?". Until I had to revise it for an essay. The thing is, take all that "flat passages" again. Think of the Pequod's fate. Does it ring a bell? Ishmael, as a Cassandra, spents half the book prophetizing what will happen, and nobody seems to listen. When you read it twice, Moby Dick is simply one of the best metaphors of life. If only it weren't so tiresome...
Rating:
Summary: Lower Away!
Review: 'Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities.' Be warned land lubber! So too, shall you become lost when you make your first 'lowering' into Moby-Dick! Full of grandiose digressions and pages of speculation, finishing Moby-Dick can be like hunting down the White Whale itself! But take heart! Any attempt to penetrate the inscrutable imagination of Herman Melville and plunge into the pinnacle of nineteenth-century American Literature will be time well spent. Consider its American Renaissance context: written in the age of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Poe, Moby-Dick has been read as Melville's critique of the Transcendentalist movement. In one fascinating passage, Ishmael describes the time spent by a 'young Platonist' whale-watching up in the mast-head: 'lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie... at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature... .' Sounds like Emerson's 'transparent eyeball.'All well and good, yet, as a harpooner notes, he hasn't raised [spotted] a single whale! Or consider the exquisite peculiarities of the Pequod and 'her' crew. There are no females on board. Are any feminine aspects then, more forcefully present for their absence? Yet, culturally, the ship contains a vast array of nationalities. Melville's own time spent on South sea islands surely plays into his inclusive view of foreign tribes. Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship demonstrates just such a view. Ishmael quips, 'I'd rather sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.' Later he states, 'to landsman in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Colombus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial one.'Clearly, the cultural explorations allowed by this novel are vast. Lastly, consider that Moby-Dick is what many critics call an encyclopedic novel--meaning that it attempts, in its own obscure way, to contain everything, in some form or another, between its covers. Incredible ahead of its time, Moby-Dick points forward to behemoth works such as Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow, to name only a couple. Of course, the encyclopedic novel, like Moby-Dick, is long and daunting. But do not depair! It takes many 'lowerings' to fully appreciate the brilliance of this novel. In the meantime, savor the Shakespearian prose as it drips off your tongue like honey! Revel in the breakneck speed of the final chase! See for yourself why it's so hard to believe that Moby-Dick is an almost forgotten text, rediscovered in the 1920's in an attic. Remember: 'in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without imagination no man [or woman] can follow another into these halls.'
Rating:
Summary: Herman Melville's Fine Hammered Steel
Review: The whale. Herman Melville's whale. The whale of Ahab's tortured monomania. The appalling white whale that confronts you, tears your limbs, terrible in his wrath, imposing his power, his beauty, his wickedness, his divinity. Of course the whale is a symbol. But of what? So many things it is impossible to pigeonhole. Ishmael says several times that "the whale has no face." The whale is like looking at a blank wall. It is a tabula rasa, a mystery, and throughout the tale affixed so many explanations that in the end he defies definition. Subjectivity reigns. Just examine "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "The Doubloon" chapters. Myriad ambivilant meanings abound. And this is what makes Moby Dick so great. Stylistically, the rhetoric soars. Contorted and ornamental, sentinous and profound, Melville's dark prose is masterful. Towards the end of the book the descriptions of the hunt, the chase, the horror, the madness, the violence, the destruction, the death, all transcend to a fury of grand, operatic scale. The prose moves like the Catskill eagle in "The Try-Works" chapter " that can dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces." Mellville's prodigious creation is realistic and romantic, turbulent and symbolic. It will last. Moby Dick is an epic of the sea such as no writer has equalled.
Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated
Review: MOBY DICK was trashed by critics in its own time, and was a commercial flop. I think those folks had the right take on the book. I found it tedious going. And it was odd how the fictional story was interrupted here and there to become a text book for a college oceanography class: everything you ever wanted to know about whales. I truly think MOBY DICK has turned into a "classic" because university students and professors who needed a literary novel to write about found MOBY DICK so rich with symbolism (even though the actual novel itself wasn't worth much). English term papers (and articles professors have to write for academic journals) require you to show--not whether THE GREAT GATSBY is a good read or not--but what Gatsby represents (the failure of the American Dream!!). The optometrist's billboard that appears throughout GATSBY represents...THE OMNISCIENCE OF GOD, AND HOW YOU CAN NOT ESCAPE HIS FATE. Those are the two big symbolic/metaphorical things in THE GREAT GATSBY. And I could write an English paper explaining those symbols. But MOBY DICK...my God!!!!!!!!! There are more symbols and metaphors on a single page of MOBY DICK than there are in the whole of GATSBY, or most other literary "classics." I could write a thousand English papers and professorial academic articles about the symbolism in MOBY DICK. I mean, the white whale...his whiteness is symbolic of...where do I start??? That Queequeg is all tattoed...what do those tattoos represent??? (That's a term paper right there). And Queequeg and Ishmael (two men) sleeping together at the beginning of the novel "like husband and wife..." (Another paper explaining that). Peter Coffin is the name on the sign outside the inn at the start of the novel. The last scene in the book has a coffin float to the surface after the Pequod (the name of an American Indian tribe!!!) sinks!!!! The inn is "like Lazarus," the inn's windows like Lazarus's eyes. (Since when have you stayed in a hotel that reminded you of a g! uy raised from the dead?????? Ah...but it's symbolism!!!) Ahab's peg leg bitten off by Moby Dick?...well, of course, that peg leg is a phallic symbol! (Yet another academic paper written right there). And what of the biblical names...like "Ishmael" and "Ahab" (names not representative of American names of the time)...more term papers and articles for academic journals. Grad students and undergrad students and professors over the years have needed literary works rich with symbolism like this to write about. And when there is a book like MOBY DICK...that makes your work very easy. And all those students and professors writing papers about MOBY DICK over the years have had a snowball effect so that people actually now give the novel merit in and of itself, aside from its helpful wealth of academic goodies. I will say that the last three pages of MOBY DICK are good. It is a good action scene, that final battle against the whale. (And there is enough symbolism in those last few pages, besides, for ten term papers. But it's good stuff in and of itself. But three good pages at the end of such a long, grinding book ain't worth the journey). When I read Mark Twain's quote that "a classic is a book everybody wants to HAVE read, but nobody wants to read," I thought immediately of MOBY DICK.
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