Rating: 
Summary: Its Greatness Escapes Me
Review:
I first read Moby Dick many years ago in high school and hated it. I thought I would give it another shot to see if time and age had changed my perspective. Well, sort of. I had always liked the basic storyline - that of Ahab's relentless pursuit of Moby Dick and how (his) obsession, taken to extreme, ultimately destroys. But there were still a few things that kept me from fully appreciating Moby Dick as a great novel.
I am still not a big fan of Melville's writing style. I found his writing to be erratic - very slow in some sections then very rapid in others. And the manner in which he switches from Ishamel's first-person narrative to third-person narrative was somewhat awkward. Then throw in a couple of chapters that are scripted like a stage play and you have a book in which I could not find any true cadence. I found myself battling (then and now) through the chapters futilely trying to get into a flow where the pages would just sweep me along.
Secondly, as noted, many chapters were devoted to describing the whaling industry and the whales in great detail. I understand that in Melville's time it was common to write novels that educated as well as entertained. But the extent to which Melville elaborated in those chapters really disrupted the storyline's momentum which had to be kick-started in later sections. The transition from a fictional narrative to a lengthy non-fictional discourse was a little too stark.
Finally, Ishmael's/Melville's continual philosophical meanderings were somewhat stretched. As Ishamel stands upon the mast-head relating the operations of whaling with the whole history of mankind or when during a thunderstorm Melville draws parallels between the unrest in nature with the unrest on the Pequod.....well, those seemed to be a bit of an overreach.
There was much about Moby Dick that I liked and there is much about this Melville work to be admired but I still found it to be a labor to read. Better the second time around. For me, Moby Dick is good novel but one in which I could not find greatness.
Rating: 
Summary: A personal look at the invasion of globalism & capitalism
Review:
A few years ago I spoke with one of the historians at the Mystic Seaport Museum of whaling abourt the Robert W Morgan, the ship used in both of the epic Moby Dick films. He explained to me that particularly for the 19th century man, a whaling voyage was one of the most horrible experiences anyone could imagine. The historian confessed that except for the top echnlon of ship's officers or highly skilled sailors who received significant portions of the voyage's profits "no one with common sense who had been on a whaling voyage would ever do it again." Yet, Melville sailed several times as a common sailor on whaling voyages!
Besides the personal and existential issues that this book poses, we have to also look at this as a book about the first invasions of the global personally indiscriminate capitalist economy into the early 19th century world of Ishmael. The New England villages which he comes from are small collections of independent producers who know each other, following trades or farming earth their parents have passed down in. Barter on most things was just replaced in the crisis of monetization of the New England economy that followed the American revolution which led to the armed revolutions and state civil wars in New England that forced Washington and the other "founders" to establish the constitution and a strong federal government to crush the rebels who wanted to go back to the demontarized past.
Melville's character comes from a world where by and large everyone works for themself, their family, or perhaps someone they know.
Yet, Ishmael is thrown into a new world, where he is simply an employee in one of the first world industries, the whaling industry. Rather than his own master, or learning to become a master in a trade, or learning to run the family farm, he is thrown into a new world where the world market for whale oil, whale ivory, and other products command him. Instead of the regular unfolding of crops on the season and trade activity reflecting that, Ishmael's voyage follows the whales around the globe, and its end is not regular.
The author's use of Ahab and his arbirtrariness and the device of the great white whale, impose these new conditions in a way that emphasizes them and makes them stand out. Beyond the person issues, they represent the subjection of Ishmael and more and more of the world economy to blind, irrational to the average person, forces that will continue to conquer the world from Melville's time to ours, throwing us into periods of boom and bust, depression, recession, unemployment, insecurity, and world wars and rivalries.
Melville's fascination with whaling is also shown by the many chapters which simply relate the many traditions and experience from the ancients until his day of whalers.
Rating:
Summary: An astounding use of language
Review: All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, where visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it. --Chapter 41 (Moby Dick)
The awesome power of the written word to conjure in the mind a reverential awe for a world you've never experienced is nothing short of miraculous. And nowhere is the wizard's wand better wielded than in the pages of Moby Dick. I agree with many of the reviewers in stating that for those uninitiated in the reading of classical literature, this is going to be arduous, and simultaneously the most superlative literary experience you will ever know.
Rating:
Summary: Most deliciously and entirely excellent, none better
Review: Embellished and imbued with light yet piercing thought, and rolling in the opiate waves where all things man wants most swim fated never to be caught, you catch sight of MOBY DICK just before it disappears--a wondrous marvel, a collection of prose poems pounding out with brilliant sparks some chain of eerily, obscurely, indisputably connected (with much a symbol and a never-prior-scented smell from lands close and unexpected that will never bear a human foot) themes and necklaced on a plot that through a whirlwind to a WHIRLPOOL runs through words that flex like honey, pound like GUNS, challenging as bravely as words have ever dared the WHITENESS that all words abhor and where, no matter what a quantity of brilliance mad captain MELVILLE spends, all words and (hark, you critics!), words about words meet their END!
AND it'll turn your conversations with your friends into THIS for a long time after you read it:
"Arr! Come over here, mate. Hast seen The Whale?"
"What?"
"Lo--listen close, now, 'What?' is all he says! Now hear this, sailor, art thou the dust that settles in the shadow of an ape? What ears hast thou been lent by long and crude progressions of a wretched birth? Has ever man spoken more clearly than in the plain and English syllables I have cast thy way? To the pleasant and monotonous heavens I declare again: Hast seen The Whale?"
He he he.
Rating:
Summary: More like a thunderstorm than a book!
Review: Few modern characters can compare with Melville's creations in Moby Dick: Ishmael, Starbuck, Queequeg, Stubbs, and of course, Ahab. Each one is a work of art. The story is gripping and Melville's use of foreshadowing is masterly. From the early chapters as Ishmael reflects on the inexorable pull of the sea and finds himself in Coffin's inn, The Trap, bunking down with an unkown cannibal, to the very end as each character realizes that he is caught in the grip of Ahab's unrelenting monomania, the book has an hypnotic power that keeps readers immersed in its spell. Anyone who thinks they know the story of Moby-Dick but has never read the book should think again. Reading it is an incredible experience that shouldn't be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing extraneous in Moby-Dick.
Review: I am alternately overjoyed and dismayed when I read the reviews of _Moby-Dick_ here. It's wonderful to see that people are still reading it and even better to see that they're enjoying it and it affects them in such a way that they feel compelled to share with the rest of the world how great a book it is. To fellow Melvilleans and Dick-Heads, I say: right on!I can't help but feel disappointed, though, when I see reviews that fault it for being too long or having extraneous details in it. It kills me when people advise skipping the cetological passages. If you read the book and feel this way, then you've missed the point completely. _Moby-Dick_ is much more than a tale of the whale-fishery. It's an epic. There's a reason behind the cetological chapters. As Van Wyck Brooks wrote in an article about his third time through the book:
"It seems to me now less chaotic, better shaped, than it seemed at first: nothing surprised me more than to discover how conscious Melville was of what he was doing.... It seemed to me intolerable that he had not removed the chapters on whales in general, on whaling, whales' heads, pitchpoling, ambergris, the try-works, etc., and published them separately: they were glorious, but I could not believe that they had been deliberately introduced to retard the action. It struck me that the action should have been retarded as it were within the story. I do not feel this now. The book is an epic and an epic requires ballast." Many people are put off by those very things. Try to imagine, though, where _The Iliad_ would be without the large catalogue of ships, or where _Paradise Lost_ would be without the large detailed list of all the fallen angels. Without the encyclopedic passages (which are well-written to boot, and a shame to skip), _Moby-Dick_ becomes nearly as banal as every other sea-story that came out at the time, saved only by Melville's extraordinary talent with a pen. Melville had a reason for doing everything he did in the book. Earlier in 1850, in his essay "Hawthorne and his Mosses" (easily one of the most wonderful examples of a writer writing about another writer -- find it using Google and enjoy it), Melville bemoaned the lack of a national literature and said that he would stand by Pop Emmons' "Fredoniad" (a so-so American epic poem, modeled after European epics) until a better epic came along. By casting _Moby-Dick_ in such a manner, it seems to me that Melville was making a deliberate attempt to create that "better epic," and in doing so helped to establish American literature as a separate entity from English literature (for more on this, read F. O. Matthiessen's _American Renaissance_, the Bible of American studies). In creating this epic, nothing is expendable: the cetological passages are just as important as the soliloquies. Besides the critical aspect as to why they're important, they also serve a commonsense function. Recall, those of you who have read the book, the chapter entitled "The Town-Ho's Story." Ishmael is telling the story of the Town-Ho to a bunch of guys in Lima, Peru. A number of times, he mentions things they're not familiar with: the Great Lakes and canallers (the men who work in canals). Each time such a topic comes up, the narrative is interrupted and Ishmael has to explain to the audience what these unfamiliar things are. By the time he gets to the final digression, he decides to have fun with it, and rhapsodizes on canallers, figuring that even digressions can be an interesting and artful way of telling a story. That chapter provides the layout for the rest of the novel, with Ishmael as the storyteller and YOU as the audience. Each time he digresses about the various species of whales, or their heads, or their tails, it's for YOUR benefit, so you get a more complete picture and aren't left in the dark as to what's going on when the men are "trying-out" the blubber or when Tashtego is working with a "pitch-pole." Beyond their explanatory function, they are also beautiful passages of writing (reread the chapter about the tails, if you don't believe me; Ishmael's love for the beauty of whales is dripping off the page). Yes, it's a long book, but it's anything but boring. If you find the cetological passages boring, try a few things: 1) keep in mind that they provide the "ballast" for our first indigenous epic; 2) try to appreciate the beauty of the prose, and don't get bogged down in its being solely focused on whales and whaling; 3) see it as a story being told to you by a very conscientious narrator who is intent on having you understand everything about whales -- this last point is quite important, especially when you contrast Ishmael with Ahab. They are both obsessed with whales: Ahab through action and Ishmael through words. The cetological passages are Ahab's monomania wearing off on Ishmael, save for in Ishmael it manifests itself in worship for the beauty of the whale; 4) think of the above 3 points and appreciate the skill and artistry it took to weave all of that into seemingly innocuous passages about whales and their parts. When I finished the book, I only had two questions: "How did he? And why can't I?" I was consumed with jealousy(!) that Melville could pull something this amazing off, and I later learned that William Faulkner felt the same way: "Moby-Dick is the book which I put down with the unqualified thought, 'I wish I had written that.'" I am amazed that everyone doesn't feel that way.
Rating:
Summary: A literary leviathan
Review: I just finished reading this breathtaking masterpiece which somehow eluded me until now, though I think this is a book one enjoys more when you come to it with some life experience under your belt.
I became fascinated with it while reading about Melville in Daniel Boorstins The Creators, and I have to say that I'm even more flabbergasted now that it was so lightly regarded when it came out and that Melville spent most of his life after writing it working as a clerk in NY city. But then, how often this is the fate of the great creative visionaries.
It is truly a colossus that interweaves so many elements in a way that defies categorization. First off it's one of the greatest adventure stories and maybe the greatest sea adventure story ever written. There's great humor and parts where I laughed out loud (a rarity in itself) the philosophical elements are some of the best in literature and then of course there's the language. Beautiful prose that often rises to the level of poetry with so many fascinating allusions. Just an amazing creation that stands alone amongst the milestones of literature.
And even though it is long and I found myself getting a tad impatient at times with the chapters describing whales and whaling, this is more the fault of the reader who's been a little too influenced by the age of instant gratification. As a matter of fact, some of the passages that I marked for their unsurpassed artistry and depth were in those very chapters.
It seems our lives become more accelerated everyday, sadly it seems at the expense of our inner lives.
And such a great reminder that one of the most moving and profound entertainment experiences one can have is also one of the most inexpensive and accesible to all. And such riches for the imagination and soul the literary masterpieces have to offer, and none more than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Supreme. More than a masterpiece.
Review: It is as if by mistake that I picked up this book. I thought it would be an adventure story, like The Count of Monte Cristo or something of its like. As my reading progressed, it became clear to me, however, that it was more of a philosophical rumination rather an ordinary suspense or thrill book. After I finished reading the book, I've had a feeling it was more than a masterpiece--Melville had just uttered my innermost feelings through a myth, with so much life, that I could never be able to.
No, the book isn't a tragedy. In the surface, you may call it that way. But more than anything, it is a Triumph. It speaks of man's upholding of his dignity amid torture in the universe. Melville gave us, implanted in us, through the most poetical language, something that we can hold onto, something that will re-reveal to us, against Gods, that we are unconquerable.
Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick: Two Books in one!
Review: It's an allegory. No! It's an encyclopedia entry! Herman Melville tells a gripping, affecting tale of an obsessed Captain's quest for a white whale. Told by Ishmael, a member of Captain Ahab's crew, the novel recounts one man's obsession with a whale. However, the philosophical implications of his obsession soon become evident. Whiteness is equated with purity and goodness, as well as absence and death. Ahab's quest for revenge eventually causes his destruction as well as the destruction of those on board the Pequod. Did God send the whale to tempt Ahab, or save him? Is Ahab Jonah, waiting to be swallowed whole and reborn? Is the whale God? Is the whale Satan? Ahab and Ishmael grapple with these questions, and Melville challenges the reader to do so as well.All of this sounds like a compelling read; it is. However, it is only half the story. The other half, unfortunately, comes in the form of more information than anyone ever wanted to know about whales, whale hunting and whale habits. In one chapter, types of whales are chronicled. In another, the method of collecting ambergris from whales is detailed.The information, while presented well, is completely out of context. It would have been better suited as an appendix or introduction to the novel. Instead, it breaks up the flow of the narrative and pulls the reader out of Ahab's thrall. The story of Moby Dick hypnotizes and captivates us as surely as it does the Captain, but Melville is not content to let us drift along with the Pequod. Instead, we have to endure an Encyclopedia Brittanica full of information on whales. Moby Dick is a great novel and it is a fascinating factual chronicle. Unfortunately, the two do not peacefully coexist. I emerged from my reading experience frustrated. Melville could have easily given us the best of both worlds. Instead, he chops up Moby Dick and feeds him to his readers in bits and pieces, causing us to shift gears continuously. Keeping us on our toes, perhaps? Maybe, but it does not q!uite work. I only wish that great literature had a fast forward button.
Rating:
Summary: Missing it?
Review: Melville is writing through Ishmael and Ishmael is Ahab. And it might help to stop thinking of the story as man/nature and dig deeper to the roots of what allegory it might have for Melville's life.
The "slow" middle might seem less slow this way and you can apply the message to your own life. It starts to transcend being just literature and more a way of life.
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