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viceabbess's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
dustoneverypage's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
3.5
Reiseerzählungen aus den 1850ern? Her damit! (auch wenn man Moby Dick vielleicht nicht als Reiseerzählung klassifizieren kann, aber es fühlt sich n bissl danach an für mich)
Mochte den Schreibstil, hab die erweiterte Interpretation aus dem Nachwort beim ersten Mal Lesen jetzt noch nicht verstanden, aber mir persönlich würd auch die Besessenheit von Rache, und was das mit den Menschen macht, als Interpretation reichen.
Langsamer Anfang, mochte Ismael gern, aber für den Großteil des Buchs ist er dann einfach Teil der Masse, was Sinn macht.
Ansonsten Moby Dick, sorry für die Menschen, du kannst da ja wirklich nichts dafür. Und sorry an die restlichen Wale. Die Jagd war aber weniger schlimm zu lesen als ich erwartet hab. Und hab sogar mindestens einmal Sarkasmus entdeckt, dementsprechend toller Klassiker zum Lesen :D
Mochte den Schreibstil, hab die erweiterte Interpretation aus dem Nachwort beim ersten Mal Lesen jetzt noch nicht verstanden, aber mir persönlich würd auch die Besessenheit von Rache, und was das mit den Menschen macht, als Interpretation reichen.
Langsamer Anfang, mochte Ismael gern, aber für den Großteil des Buchs ist er dann einfach Teil der Masse, was Sinn macht.
Ansonsten Moby Dick, sorry für die Menschen, du kannst da ja wirklich nichts dafür. Und sorry an die restlichen Wale. Die Jagd war aber weniger schlimm zu lesen als ich erwartet hab. Und hab sogar mindestens einmal Sarkasmus entdeckt, dementsprechend toller Klassiker zum Lesen :D
thaurisil's review against another edition
2.0
“Call me Ishmael”, and so it begins. Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship, and with his newly met tribal friend, Queequeg, he joins the Pequod, a ship captained by the monomaniacal (as Melville repeatedly describes him) Ahab. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg for his leg was once destroyed by the sperm whale Moby Dick, and he spends the next three years on a quest to hunt and kill Moby Dick. We never meet Moby Dick until the end of the book, but Melville speaking through Ishmael uses the better part of the book describing the majesty of the sperm whale, the process of whaling, and various incidents on a whaling journey. Throughout, there is a sense of foreboding, as Ahab drives his crew on with his charisma despite it becoming increasingly clear that the ship stands little chance against Moby Dick. But Ahab is bent on his purpose, and they find Moby Dick, and everything happens as we expect. All are killed, with only Ishmael surviving to tell the tale.
This book is replete with themes. There is the theme of majesty – the majesty of the sperm whale, with his size and power, to the point that he is elevated to almost god-like status by Ishmael, and the the majesty of the sea, with its hidden depths and vast mysteries. There is the theme of choice and fate – does Ahab pursue Moby Dick by choice or is it fate that drives him to his senseless end? There is theme of civility versus paganism, embodied in the Pequod’s multinational crew that includes white Americans, Indians and tribal people, amongst others, with uncivilised Queequeg often idealised as more honourable and selfless than the civilised men. There is the theme of religion, with Melville criticising the hypocrisies of Christians, aligning Ahab with the devil, and scattering his pages with names from the Old Testament.
Yes, Melville’s messages of the futility of obsessions and the inferiority of man to God are clear, but I wish he would convey these messages in a more enjoyable way. I mean, it’s not that I hated the book. I enjoyed the passages describing the whale, because much as they deviated from the action, they conveyed Melville’s passion for whales, and were educational in a compelling way. I enjoyed too the interactions between the characters. The personalities in this book are diverse, from madmen like Ahab to sensible Christian men like Starbuck to happy-go-lucky comic characters like Stubb to pitifully insane characters like Pip, and it was interesting seeing how these characters interacted with one another when thrown together. I especially enjoyed the Pequod’s gams with other ships, and the comparisons inevitably drawn between the Ahab’s objectives and character and those of the other ships’ captains.
But I believe Melville’s greatest shortcoming lay in the fact that he tried too hard for grandiosity. He wanted this to be an epic. As the main subject of the text, the sperm whale’s immensity couldn’t have been emphasised more. The story covered geographical vastness, and hinted at unfathomable ocean depths. The whale was covered from etymological, cetological, anatomical, phrenological, historical and artistic perspectives, just to name a few. There was lots of name-dropping going on, with people like Alexander, Hannibal, biblical characters, kings, sultans and famous navigators mentioned. There were mountains and forests and ruins and wars. Melville’s point was clear – the whale is grand, and he wanted this to be a grand novel. But he couldn’t pull it off coherently, and everything became an overwhelming mess. His language was so verbose that I had to read it slowly to understand it, and yet I didn’t have the patience or interest to muster the energy required to make sense of his writing. I could see Melville’s passion in his subject, but his passion was over-the-top.
I was a little disappointed. I gave [b:The Scarlet Letter|12296|The Scarlet Letter|Nathaniel Hawthorne|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327879100s/12296.jpg|4925227] 5 stars when I read it last year, and I knew that Melville was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, so I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I’m glad I read it, but only because it is so widely recognised as a classic that I had to experience it for myself.
This book is replete with themes. There is the theme of majesty – the majesty of the sperm whale, with his size and power, to the point that he is elevated to almost god-like status by Ishmael, and the the majesty of the sea, with its hidden depths and vast mysteries. There is the theme of choice and fate – does Ahab pursue Moby Dick by choice or is it fate that drives him to his senseless end? There is theme of civility versus paganism, embodied in the Pequod’s multinational crew that includes white Americans, Indians and tribal people, amongst others, with uncivilised Queequeg often idealised as more honourable and selfless than the civilised men. There is the theme of religion, with Melville criticising the hypocrisies of Christians, aligning Ahab with the devil, and scattering his pages with names from the Old Testament.
Yes, Melville’s messages of the futility of obsessions and the inferiority of man to God are clear, but I wish he would convey these messages in a more enjoyable way. I mean, it’s not that I hated the book. I enjoyed the passages describing the whale, because much as they deviated from the action, they conveyed Melville’s passion for whales, and were educational in a compelling way. I enjoyed too the interactions between the characters. The personalities in this book are diverse, from madmen like Ahab to sensible Christian men like Starbuck to happy-go-lucky comic characters like Stubb to pitifully insane characters like Pip, and it was interesting seeing how these characters interacted with one another when thrown together. I especially enjoyed the Pequod’s gams with other ships, and the comparisons inevitably drawn between the Ahab’s objectives and character and those of the other ships’ captains.
But I believe Melville’s greatest shortcoming lay in the fact that he tried too hard for grandiosity. He wanted this to be an epic. As the main subject of the text, the sperm whale’s immensity couldn’t have been emphasised more. The story covered geographical vastness, and hinted at unfathomable ocean depths. The whale was covered from etymological, cetological, anatomical, phrenological, historical and artistic perspectives, just to name a few. There was lots of name-dropping going on, with people like Alexander, Hannibal, biblical characters, kings, sultans and famous navigators mentioned. There were mountains and forests and ruins and wars. Melville’s point was clear – the whale is grand, and he wanted this to be a grand novel. But he couldn’t pull it off coherently, and everything became an overwhelming mess. His language was so verbose that I had to read it slowly to understand it, and yet I didn’t have the patience or interest to muster the energy required to make sense of his writing. I could see Melville’s passion in his subject, but his passion was over-the-top.
I was a little disappointed. I gave [b:The Scarlet Letter|12296|The Scarlet Letter|Nathaniel Hawthorne|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327879100s/12296.jpg|4925227] 5 stars when I read it last year, and I knew that Melville was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, so I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I’m glad I read it, but only because it is so widely recognised as a classic that I had to experience it for myself.
stephanie_garrott's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
Love it or hate it, whenever someone asks if Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is worth reading I always enthusiastically say yes you should, yes it's worth it, yes, yes like some weirdass library Molly Bloom. An epic seafaring quest—one that is a prime example of how a major theme in literature is Don’t Get on Boats (my rant on that here)—to fight the emptiness and meaninglessness of the world symbolized by the white whale. Even if we the reader may be like Cpt. Ahab trying to find our own sense of purpose in our pursuit of the novel, it is a voyage of beautiful prose worth setting out on. C’mon, who doesn’t want to hang out and possibly die horrifically with this complete fucker:
Sure, I see how you can find the middle sections on whaling facts to be dry, but the ending of this slaps. It’s as hard hitting as a whale ramming a boat like, say, the Essex which inspired this novel (Philbrick’s [b:In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|17780|In the Heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|Nathaniel Philbrick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335902168l/17780._SY75_.jpg|1640941] is an excellent read on the tragedy). If you don’t end up liking it, you aren’t alone as the reviews upon its release in 1851 are rather harsh (you can read some excerpts here) and at the time of Melville’s death it had sold only a third of what his first novel, [b:Typee|597320|Typee A Peep at Polynesian Life|Herman Melville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388604035l/597320._SY75_.jpg|3078516], had done, but it has since become a heralded classic with many other “classic” authors spouting praise ([a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615562983p2/3535.jpg] wrote ‘I wish I had written [Moby-Dick]’) and had a rise in popularity following WWI with expatriates living in 1920’s Paris describing it as ‘a sort of cunning test by which the genuineness of another man’s response to literature could be proved.’ But also it is because both Moby-Dick the novel and the symbolism of Moby Dick the whale (the title is hyphenated, the whale is not and the reason might be as much a hunt as for the whale himself), have become so analyzed and debated over and over again on the many themes such as the power of nature and the frailty of humans, the dangers of monomania and self-assuredness (some critics cite Ahab as a criticism of [a:Ralph Waldo Emerson|12080|Ralph Waldo Emerson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1393555704p2/12080.jpg]’s ideas of self-reliance or what Melville wrote as his ‘transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish), and more. Perhaps it is partly the way Moby-Dick is interpreted as a map through the soul of the early US and its issues around race, religion and false promises, all told in a powerful prose that flows like the waves on the sea. This book has lasted for a reason and there’s likely nothing new to say about it but I’m gonna ramble at ye.
‘My favorite book is Moby-Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a story of a man who hates an animal. And that's enough.’
-Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
[a:Greil Marcus|33221|Greil Marcus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322861816p2/33221.jpg] has said that Moby Dick has lasted as ‘the sea we swim in.’ It has been a staple of pop culture for a long time, and likely still long to come. In music Moby Dick gave us that epic John Bonham drum solo, that Umphrey’s McGee jam, or even Melville’s great-great-great-musician nephew, Moby, who acted a dick towards Natalie Portman. Bob Dylan went on about the book in his Nobel Lecture and references it in many of his songs.The character’s became code names for The Baader-Meinhof Gang in prison (ironically, Moby Dick was their code for the State which, like in the book, outlived them all) and the doom-fated character Starbuck’s namesake has become a major coffee chain and a character in Battlestar Galactica. It has been many films, and film references, such as the other whaling ship, Rosebud, being a key name in Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane (he would attempt, but never finish a 1971 film adaptation). The coffin surfacing in the flood in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a direct reference, and recently there was a whole scene as a blatant allusion to the book in the second Avatar film. It was also a major source for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), with Khan going to his death quoting the book: ‘From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee… for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee…’
Gregory Peck as Ahab in John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick film, with a screenplay written by [a:Ray Bradbury|1630|Ray Bradbury|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1445955959p2/1630.jpg]
While pop culture is full of references to Moby-Dick, the novel itself is overflowing with allusions to other great works of literature. Ahab himself is often argued to be a composite reference to Oedipus, Narcissus, Prometheus and his biblical namesake. Ahab—who is temporarily afflicted—comes across the head of a sperm whale hanging from the ship (‘it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert’) and demand of it ‘tell us the secret thing that is in thee,’ a pretty on-the-nose reference to Oedipus (also he frequently uses his spear as a crutch and to murder whales, not unlike Oedipus murdering his own father with his walking stick). Also the whole prophecy thing that occurs to Oedipus and Ahab, because the two chariots that will lead to his death bit is pretty excellent when it comes about. The tale of Narcissus is directly referenced in the first chapter and foreshadows Ahab’s own fate, failing to see that the evil he sees in the whale is a ‘wildly projected’ image of himself (well and the whole drowning aspect). The Prometheus bits are my favorite though, with Ahab often associated with fire such as his flaming spear and, with respect to him symbolizing the white whale as a god of sorts, stealing from the whales the oil for fire (for which he was punished). King Ahab was punished for worshiping false gods (whales as gods again).
But I want to get back to Prometheus for a moment because I have my own Prometheus confession. Silence please. Well…when I was at the university, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would go the the Barnes and Noble and see the literary part of the world. I was interested in Moby-Dick, but like, whew, should I spend my money on a book? Just then there was a big flash of lightning, a store shaking crash, and we were plunged into darkness as the power went out. People screamed, I ran outside to see the storm, to see the powerline that had been struck, “only to realize” I had “accidentally” (emphasizing the air-quotes while scanning the room for who might be a cop) left with Moby-Dick still in hand under the cover of dark. I’M NOT PROUD OF IT, OKAY (im gonna be real with you—not that bad, honestly) but it had pictures and I did read it all rather quickly sitting under a bridge off campus by the river (would recommend reading this in your early 20s when you A. are old enough to get a lot of it, B. have disposable time to read in big chunks and C. an attention span). Anyways, like Prometheus, I would later find myself chained to a rock AKA the customer service desk of a different Barnes and Noble for several years to be pecked at daily by customers and management alike. They didn’t have to bother with my liver, my good friend alcohol was ravishing that enough on its own. SO I GOT MINE, everyone can back off now.
But this book is just teeming with symbolism and themes. When Bob Dylan delivered his Nobel Lecture, he spoke on how this was one of three books that really shaped him ‘and the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs either knowingly or unintentionally.’ One of the themes I frequently discussed with a coworker when she read this last year was the representation of race. She pointed out there are some problematic issues but how it’s interesting to remember this book was pretty progressive at its time. We see racism as a major sin, such as the ship, The Pequod, taking it’s name from an indigenous tribe in Massachusetts that perished under the arrival of Europeans and thus makes the Pequod a symbol of death and doom (*jazz hands* fooooooreshadowinggggg!). Melville has often referred to the novel as an allegory, and one prevailing interpretation with critics is that it functions as an allegory for te racial relations around slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Melville lets us know he’s not down with slavery, such as when Pip realizes the price of a dead whale is significantly more than his own price as a living slave and promptly has a mental breakdown. It should be noted that Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg (it could be argued it pushes towards the erotic) is highly subversive and the latter fellow and his skills are a critique on the belief of white superiority.
‘There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man,’ states Ahab, and many interpretations of the novel focus on the whale as an evil. I believe Ahab sees Moby Dick this way (a projection, as previously mentioned), and we can certainly view this story as an expression of the fragility of humans in the face of the awesome power of nature. Don’t fuck with nature, it’s going to win. However, so much of this is wrapped up in an investigation of applying meaning, applying symbols and needing purpose in the terrifying face of meaninglessness. The white whale (based on a similar ship-killer whale named Mocha Dick) is no accident, with white often believed to be an absence of color and calling to mind a cold, apathetic nothingness. It is a lack of good or evil, and Ahab is falsely applying evil here, trying to create a destiny and fight against a perceived villain to be the main character hero of his own invention. We also see this all as humans defenselessness against fate. Whales are big, don’t mess with them. You’ll see…
Okay, I’ve spun quite the yarn here and really, just give this a go. Even if you don’t like it, it’s still pretty cool to say you’ve read it. And there are SO many amazing scenes, I promise. Like, okay, I can’t talk about this book without mentioning when Ahab makes everyone do shots out of the cavities in their spears. And that ending. It’s wild. It’s a big book, it’s full of themes and complex symbolism and tons of literary allusions and it may rock you like a ship upon stormy seas, but it’s worth the voyage. And, hey, at least you can read about whales noshing on sailors, that’s pretty fun.
Sure, I see how you can find the middle sections on whaling facts to be dry, but the ending of this slaps. It’s as hard hitting as a whale ramming a boat like, say, the Essex which inspired this novel (Philbrick’s [b:In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|17780|In the Heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|Nathaniel Philbrick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335902168l/17780._SY75_.jpg|1640941] is an excellent read on the tragedy). If you don’t end up liking it, you aren’t alone as the reviews upon its release in 1851 are rather harsh (you can read some excerpts here) and at the time of Melville’s death it had sold only a third of what his first novel, [b:Typee|597320|Typee A Peep at Polynesian Life|Herman Melville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388604035l/597320._SY75_.jpg|3078516], had done, but it has since become a heralded classic with many other “classic” authors spouting praise ([a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615562983p2/3535.jpg] wrote ‘I wish I had written [Moby-Dick]’) and had a rise in popularity following WWI with expatriates living in 1920’s Paris describing it as ‘a sort of cunning test by which the genuineness of another man’s response to literature could be proved.’ But also it is because both Moby-Dick the novel and the symbolism of Moby Dick the whale (the title is hyphenated, the whale is not and the reason might be as much a hunt as for the whale himself), have become so analyzed and debated over and over again on the many themes such as the power of nature and the frailty of humans, the dangers of monomania and self-assuredness (some critics cite Ahab as a criticism of [a:Ralph Waldo Emerson|12080|Ralph Waldo Emerson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1393555704p2/12080.jpg]’s ideas of self-reliance or what Melville wrote as his ‘transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish), and more. Perhaps it is partly the way Moby-Dick is interpreted as a map through the soul of the early US and its issues around race, religion and false promises, all told in a powerful prose that flows like the waves on the sea. This book has lasted for a reason and there’s likely nothing new to say about it but I’m gonna ramble at ye.
‘My favorite book is Moby-Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a story of a man who hates an animal. And that's enough.’
-Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
[a:Greil Marcus|33221|Greil Marcus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322861816p2/33221.jpg] has said that Moby Dick has lasted as ‘the sea we swim in.’ It has been a staple of pop culture for a long time, and likely still long to come. In music Moby Dick gave us that epic John Bonham drum solo, that Umphrey’s McGee jam, or even Melville’s great-great-great-musician nephew, Moby, who acted a dick towards Natalie Portman. Bob Dylan went on about the book in his Nobel Lecture and references it in many of his songs.The character’s became code names for The Baader-Meinhof Gang in prison (ironically, Moby Dick was their code for the State which, like in the book, outlived them all) and the doom-fated character Starbuck’s namesake has become a major coffee chain and a character in Battlestar Galactica. It has been many films, and film references, such as the other whaling ship, Rosebud, being a key name in Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane (he would attempt, but never finish a 1971 film adaptation). The coffin surfacing in the flood in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a direct reference, and recently there was a whole scene as a blatant allusion to the book in the second Avatar film. It was also a major source for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), with Khan going to his death quoting the book: ‘From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee… for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee…’
Gregory Peck as Ahab in John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick film, with a screenplay written by [a:Ray Bradbury|1630|Ray Bradbury|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1445955959p2/1630.jpg]
While pop culture is full of references to Moby-Dick, the novel itself is overflowing with allusions to other great works of literature. Ahab himself is often argued to be a composite reference to Oedipus, Narcissus, Prometheus and his biblical namesake. Ahab—who is temporarily afflicted—comes across the head of a sperm whale hanging from the ship (‘it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert’) and demand of it ‘tell us the secret thing that is in thee,’ a pretty on-the-nose reference to Oedipus (also he frequently uses his spear as a crutch and to murder whales, not unlike Oedipus murdering his own father with his walking stick). Also the whole prophecy thing that occurs to Oedipus and Ahab, because the two chariots that will lead to his death bit is pretty excellent when it comes about. The tale of Narcissus is directly referenced in the first chapter and foreshadows Ahab’s own fate, failing to see that the evil he sees in the whale is a ‘wildly projected’ image of himself (well and the whole drowning aspect). The Prometheus bits are my favorite though, with Ahab often associated with fire such as his flaming spear and, with respect to him symbolizing the white whale as a god of sorts, stealing from the whales the oil for fire (for which he was punished). King Ahab was punished for worshiping false gods (whales as gods again).
But I want to get back to Prometheus for a moment because I have my own Prometheus confession. Silence please. Well…when I was at the university, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would go the the Barnes and Noble and see the literary part of the world. I was interested in Moby-Dick, but like, whew, should I spend my money on a book? Just then there was a big flash of lightning, a store shaking crash, and we were plunged into darkness as the power went out. People screamed, I ran outside to see the storm, to see the powerline that had been struck, “only to realize” I had “accidentally” (emphasizing the air-quotes while scanning the room for who might be a cop) left with Moby-Dick still in hand under the cover of dark. I’M NOT PROUD OF IT, OKAY (im gonna be real with you—not that bad, honestly) but it had pictures and I did read it all rather quickly sitting under a bridge off campus by the river (would recommend reading this in your early 20s when you A. are old enough to get a lot of it, B. have disposable time to read in big chunks and C. an attention span). Anyways, like Prometheus, I would later find myself chained to a rock AKA the customer service desk of a different Barnes and Noble for several years to be pecked at daily by customers and management alike. They didn’t have to bother with my liver, my good friend alcohol was ravishing that enough on its own. SO I GOT MINE, everyone can back off now.
But this book is just teeming with symbolism and themes. When Bob Dylan delivered his Nobel Lecture, he spoke on how this was one of three books that really shaped him ‘and the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs either knowingly or unintentionally.’ One of the themes I frequently discussed with a coworker when she read this last year was the representation of race. She pointed out there are some problematic issues but how it’s interesting to remember this book was pretty progressive at its time. We see racism as a major sin, such as the ship, The Pequod, taking it’s name from an indigenous tribe in Massachusetts that perished under the arrival of Europeans and thus makes the Pequod a symbol of death and doom (*jazz hands* fooooooreshadowinggggg!). Melville has often referred to the novel as an allegory, and one prevailing interpretation with critics is that it functions as an allegory for te racial relations around slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Melville lets us know he’s not down with slavery, such as when Pip realizes the price of a dead whale is significantly more than his own price as a living slave and promptly has a mental breakdown. It should be noted that Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg (it could be argued it pushes towards the erotic) is highly subversive and the latter fellow and his skills are a critique on the belief of white superiority.
‘There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man,’ states Ahab, and many interpretations of the novel focus on the whale as an evil. I believe Ahab sees Moby Dick this way (a projection, as previously mentioned), and we can certainly view this story as an expression of the fragility of humans in the face of the awesome power of nature. Don’t fuck with nature, it’s going to win. However, so much of this is wrapped up in an investigation of applying meaning, applying symbols and needing purpose in the terrifying face of meaninglessness. The white whale (based on a similar ship-killer whale named Mocha Dick) is no accident, with white often believed to be an absence of color and calling to mind a cold, apathetic nothingness. It is a lack of good or evil, and Ahab is falsely applying evil here, trying to create a destiny and fight against a perceived villain to be the main character hero of his own invention. We also see this all as humans defenselessness against fate. Whales are big, don’t mess with them. You’ll see…
Okay, I’ve spun quite the yarn here and really, just give this a go. Even if you don’t like it, it’s still pretty cool to say you’ve read it. And there are SO many amazing scenes, I promise. Like, okay, I can’t talk about this book without mentioning when Ahab makes everyone do shots out of the cavities in their spears. And that ending. It’s wild. It’s a big book, it’s full of themes and complex symbolism and tons of literary allusions and it may rock you like a ship upon stormy seas, but it’s worth the voyage. And, hey, at least you can read about whales noshing on sailors, that’s pretty fun.
michaelpdonley's review against another edition
3.0
I know this is a classic, and at times I was riveted. But for the love... there is SO much detail about every last inch of whales, ships, blubber and guts and lines and harpoons, etc. I listened to the 24-hour audio book on 19 CDs, and while I respect Melville and his epic tale, I'm tremendously grateful to be on dry land again.
eviestarlight's review
challenging
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
4.0
chris_dech's review against another edition
5.0
Damn whale.
An eternally and infinitely beautiful monolith of prosaic genius and a testament to the creativity of mankind. Almost as impossible to pin down and have an answer to its questions as it is to hunt the titular whale.
An eternally and infinitely beautiful monolith of prosaic genius and a testament to the creativity of mankind. Almost as impossible to pin down and have an answer to its questions as it is to hunt the titular whale.
viryr's review against another edition
4.0
Un clásico y uno muy bueno, una aventura increíble en el imponente mar y de la belleza de éste en una época donde los navíos eran una genialidad e innovación. Lo malo de este libro es la matanza cruel a mamíferos hermosos cómo los son los cetáceos y en esta época para muchos incluida yo es detestable que muera un ser vivo a manos de los humanos. Pero como obra literaria es muy buena, la narración esta inspirada en la época y digo esto último por que las críticas negativas del libro no es por la matanza de cetáceos sino por como esta redactado y pues este libro fue publicado en 1851, duh!
“No hay locura de la bestia de la tierra que no sea infinitamente superada por la locura del hombre.”
“No hay locura de la bestia de la tierra que no sea infinitamente superada por la locura del hombre.”
elliearun's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5