Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Whale Weekly

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Whale Weekly by Herman Melville

34 reviews

topbob's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have a hard time pinning down my thoughts on Moby Dick. The vast number of exhalations on whaling do vary drastically in regard to my interest level. I do think that ultimately the reader's experience with Moby Dick will ultimately come down to their reading endurance, and general interest in the ideas of the novel. Still, there are many aspects of Moby Dick that you would be hard-pressed to refrain from praising.

Characters
The characters in Moby Dick are incredible. They are well distinguished from each other, and Melville dedicates a lot of thought to the motivations of the characters. Moreover, the interpersonal relationships of the characters are also captivating in that they are shared between great characters. While I feel that the latter half of the novel broadens its scope outside of the individual for the most part, it makes up for this broadened scope with the "Gam" chapters that see our beloved characters meet other whaling ships.

Moments of tension
I could name a few instances where Melville cleverly builds to a climactic moment. These instances generally surround Moby Dick, and they are well executed.

(Maybe)
Spontaneous banger lines. Just sudden gems from Melville thrown out randomly. They can be easily missed by the careless reader, and I think these make up most of Moby Dick's brilliance.

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willowbiblio's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

"Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the sides; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the center of the serenity around."
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This started out really strong for me, but fairly soon after our cast set sail on the Pequod it became really boring. I enjoyed the exploration of friendship between Ishmael and Queequog. To me that was the most interesting part of the book. 80-90% of this was hyper-specific information dumps about whaling and whaleboats, which I have zero interest in. Had this been more character driven maybe I would have enjoyed it more.

The narrative itself kind of went nowhere, which was ironic given that they were literally out at sea. Nothing much was said or explored other than Ahab's continual comparison to the devil and weird monologues saying nothing from him and others.

I was reminded of Ulysses when the POV shifted from Ishmael, because Melville adopted a sort of playwright style similar to the complete shift that occurred in Ulysses. That was actually quite entertaining.

The butchering and death wasn't for me. Maybe I just didn't "get" this.

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annilane's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

My assessment of this book is obviously skewed by the 170 odd years of distance between us, but I am able to appreciate the quality of narrative of information in this novel. There’s a lot of information that is relevant to the story but not actually important, really, and since I read it on audiobook I found rather boring, since I think I’m print there are diagrams to accompany, for example, the chapters outlining every species of whale whose existence was known at that time. I loved Queequeg, and otherwise had a bit of a hard time telling all the men on the ship apart. Overall I would recommend, because there’s lots of information about whales which is cool, and in general if a book’s popularity has somewhat survived over 150 years, it’s probably worth noting. There were some messages throughout the story that I think a lot of people can learn from.

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oftalone90's review against another edition

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challenging tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Not sure what Miss Honey was thinking letting Matilda read this tome….
It’s BIZARRE.
Melville’s style switches, Jekyll and Hyde-esque. There are the parts that tell the story of the hunt for Moby Dick (which are well written, few and far between and odd. If I’d have been told Melville was on hallucinogenic drugs when writing these bits, I wouldn’t be surprised) and then there are the parts that would be better placed in a non-chron about whales. Who cares about cetology, or fossils, or why sperm whales are called sperm whales?
I only got through this book by listening to it on The Big Read. I’d never have made it through if I actually had to read it all. Chop out the unnecessary bits and it would be less than 200 pages.

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