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Moby Dick Paperback – June 1, 2013
| Herman Melville (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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- Print length704 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Lexile measure420
- Dimensions4.98 x 1.67 x 7.84 inches
- PublisherAlma Books
- Publication dateJune 1, 2013
- ISBN-101847492746
- ISBN-13978-1847492746
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"The infinite novel. Page after page the text grows in immensity, until it encompasses the whole cosmos." —Jorge Luis Borges
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Product details
- Publisher : Alma Books; Reprint edition (June 1, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 704 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1847492746
- ISBN-13 : 978-1847492746
- Reading age : 8+ years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 420
- Item Weight : 1.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 4.98 x 1.67 x 7.84 inches
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

The writing career of Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) peaked early, with his early novels, such as Typee becoming best sellers. By the mid-1850s his poularity declined sharply, and by the time he died he had been largely forgotten. Yet in time his novel Moby Dick came to be regarded as one of the finest works of American, and indeed world, literature, as was Billy Budd, which was not published until long after his death, in 1924.

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We embark on the Pequod's voyage naively. We are land-lubbers. We have preconceptions of man's great purpose in God's universe. Unfortunately, many of us have been shanghaied into this voyage by high school English teachers, or professors of literature. Thankfully, after we grumble and chafe at the burden of reading an archaic text, those of us who sail on are taken to a different destination where we find answers un-imagined. Our argument with Melville is that it takes us hundreds of pages to arrive at a question whose answer may or may not be justly, directly and rightly answered during our first tortured reading of the text.
Historical circumstances with subsequent themes can be identified then developed centering on the time period of Moby Dick's publication. Yes, a ship named the Essex went down in 1820--it had been battered by a whale, and the survivors ate each other prior to salvation. Wikipedia even notes that a white whale "Mocha Dick" was taken in 1830. By the publication date of 1851, the transcendentalists--Hawthorne, Thoreau and Emerson--were in full voice. Historical themes and circumstances, however prevalent, are not enough to perpetuate the reading of Moby Dick. In our modern world of videos and twitters, a dusty academic, wearing the frayed robes of history might cry in the wilderness, but neither his cries nor the certainty of his argument compel teachers, or professors to require reading this ponderous example of American literature. We read and celebrate Moby Dick because only Herman Melville can get away with the tortured word choice, sentence structure, and stream of consciousness that culminate in such a uniquely inspired manner that we exclaim to ourselves, "Damn, did he just say that...Nobody writes like that." In chapter 3, "The Spouter Inn," Melville shows his quirky genius in the instance when he couples the danger of the impending voyage with the description of a wall painting:
Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. Who can conceive of the phrase `delineate chaos bewitched' and then make it work in the context of a sentence, paragraph, chapter and novel? At the same inn, he describes the barware: Though true cylinders without--within, the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. The alliteration fairly gurgles, and the image presented could only be imagined and described by someone who has spent far too much tavern time.
There is more to the book than it's place in history, it's description of the commercial whale fishery, or its place in the pantheon of transcendental literature. If the plot could be reduced to the mother of all fish stories--the big one that got away--, or maybe if it could be imagined as a history of whaling coupled with a south sea travel adventure gone awry, then perhaps we would easily fathom the author's intent and be done with the book after a long painful read. That is not the case. In a rare instance of clear speaking, Melville encapsulates his plot when he writes:
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask.
In that candid moment, the author takes away from us the easy answer to his purpose. This clever and direct exposition only happens because we are already aboard the Pequod having left behind the quaint Nantucket Quakers, and the rest of Christendom for that matter, to circumnavigate the globe with all manner of heathen, cannibals and other savages. Though every one of them seems to be outcast from the polite, well mannered world, they are all more companionable shipmates than the demons Ahab unleashes from bowels of the ship once the shore is safely out of sight. These previously hidden sailors look like Satan's minions and are captained by Fedallah, Ahab`s chief imp.
When we enter the vast middle part of the novel, we are truly at sea. The author tests our patience; we sail along gaining all the knowledge of whales and whaling that Melville can pack into the book before we toss it aside in frustration and vow never to read it again. Speculate, if you will, that Melville wanted to offer an in depth word on commercial whaling, or perhaps he saw himself as one of the last great chroniclers of an industry that having had a golden era would eventually go the way of North American buffalo hunters whose livelihood though still viable in the mid 19th century, would soon be challenged by the depletion of herds and habitat that was noted by Melville. To his credit, the author states that the vastness of the ocean with huge pods of whales seemed to preclude extinction.
We read the ponderous middle fearing that we might miss something before we get to the final chase. The Pequod's circumnavigation is meant to last for a period of years, and after we slog through the meat and matter of whales and whaling, we wonder if Melville planned for us to take several years to digest Moby Dick. Whatever the author intended in the substantial center of the book can be argued, but by the time we are through it, we know that we have made a curious passage through various seas and around the horn. We know quite a lot about the murderous and bloody slaughter of whales and the delight of mankind to inflict pain while simultaneously taking pleasure in the groping, eating, slicing and boiling of whale flesh.
This book was written prior to environmental protection laws and humane societies, but the author's intent to show the savagery of this commercial fishery is beyond dispute. We know that `nature is red in tooth and claw.' We could easily read Moby Dick thinking that the author's premise is that this primal, savage nature of man enables us to embark on long, life threatening, heroic voyages. It is our divine destiny to battle with nature as we struggle to refine God's lesser creatures into civilized oil for lamps, scented tapers, corsets, and heavenly smells. That theme offers one type of answer to our eternal question: "what is the chief and highest end of man." It provides a reason for all mankind's transgressions against the planet past, present and future.
Melville, however, muddles our world view with a cast of malignant characters. Those characters with the exception of Starbuck are united in their compulsion to find, torment and kill the white whale. That is less than a noble quest. There is no righteous justification of the acts of man toward Moby Dick. With his crooked jaw, his unseemly white hump, his identifiable spout and his habitual migrations, Moby Dick lives ambivalent to the purpose of man reacting massively and defensively to the crude hunger and cruelty of humans--those base, natural tendencies that require us to seek a bloody harvest on Melville's ocean.
The crew is united by gold, evident in the universal lust toward the spiked doubloon on the ship's mast. Cowardly hesitation to the taking of whales is punished. Consider poor Pip. While serving as an oarsman on Stubbs's crew, he jumps twice from the boat. He was warned once, then, as threatened, he is abandoned on an empty ocean upon which he loses his mind and only after is gathered aboard to become Ahab's personal fool and companion.
Characterized by the white whale, nature suffers mankind's pricks and obscenities to a certain point. Ahab's evil obsession is finally erased at the end of the third day when in a watery vortex created by the whale Ahab, ship and crews are defiantly swallowed. Dire omens, heartfelt begging, splintered boats, lost limbs, lost children and the repeated warnings of fellow captains--all are ignored so that only Moby Dick is left to rid nature of the diseased, mono maniacal disorder that Ahab has visited upon the world.
Shakespearean influences can be found everywhere in the book. As can be noted, the Parsee's self-fulfilling prophecies sounded like those weird ones by the witches in Macbeth. Another interesting part of the book was Chapter 54, The Town-Ho's Story, which seemed to be the most absorbing chapter. As a story within a story; or another layer of stories under such stories, probably this chapter may have many twists, tricks, and/or plots for this specific story. That is, I doubted that such an arguably good one happened to become the head of a mutiny, I held that he was meant to be the one who led such mutiny, a rebellious one in his nature. How about the bad guy who happened to trigger the feud led to the mutiny? He probably was a bad one, but it would be absurd to move the whole burden of such mutiny to an insolent one, not onto the desperado.
When I told one of my senior friends during mountain tracking last month that I was reading the Moby Dick, he suggested that the book should be read as a good business novel. He observed that the characters could be better understood if we put the characters and situations in the book into a corporate setting or business context. Indeed the book itself is about crews in whaling business - risky, profitable, and overly-exploited -, hence business perspectives underlying in the story. How about the intense politics by and between Ahab and Starbuck? Ahab seemed to be worried about the possibility of a mutiny led by Starbuck should he had gone too far. In Chapter 109, Ahab showed his unexpected self-restraint when he was confronted with Starbuck about how to deal with leaking barrels. At the end of the day, he was just an executive hired by principal owners, i.e. Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg, of the ship. How about Captain Ahab's elite whaling troupe, led by the Parsee? We have seen secret elite groups or standing task forces within large corporations. Even their phone numbers are not listed on the company directory, those groups do jobs directly mandated by the highest executives behind the scene. Having gained confidence after a series of tugs-of-war with Starbuck and his crews, or just out of nervous impatience, Ahab went all out, with Pip as his sidekick. As Ahab seized initiatives, Starbuck yielded to Ahab's authority. Chapter 132 was the most hilarious one: As Ahab exhibited a kind of "When I was young" tirade, or "Latte is Horse..", a pun in Korean, Starbuck just came down to give Ahab flattery: "Oh, my captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!" Although he knew what would come to him and his crew, he just followed his Fate, not stood against her, which is common in failling corporations.
By Amazon Customer on October 8, 2022
Top reviews from other countries
Its structure and plotting were ahead of its time, which was probably one reason it never did that well at its original publication, but also this holds up a mirror to us all, and to be honest no one likes to see themselves, warts and all. With one of the most famous openings in all of literature, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ it is simple and yet eloquent. Within its multiple narrative style so we hear from our narrator, but also this does give us other perspectives throughout, as it draws on many influences and other works, giving us not only an intimate portrayal of the whaling business and life on a whaling ship, but also the different types of whale, and what the whole business was set up for.
Of course as we all know, what should be just a normal whaling voyage becomes something more here, as Captain Ahab is set on vengeance, wanting to locate the whale Moby-Dick, that has crippled him. Changing to a script at times, thus making some chapters more like a play so the structure and planning of this was unlike anything that went before, but it all meshes together quite seamlessly.
Taking in such themes as religion, spirituality, bigotry, the pursuit of the mighty dollar, revenge, hate and love, with friendship and so on this has much to offer any reader, although as with any intelligently written book that takes in many themes and issues this does require a close and careful read to gain the full effect and power of the story. After all, if you think that this is just a novel about whaling, I am sorry to say that you have not understood what you have read. In all once read this is something that you won’t easily forget and is in all a fantastically wonderful piece of prose, showing that the novel is a form that can offer us so much.
Firstly I very much enjoyed the beginning of the book where Ishmael meets up with the tattooed Queequeg at the Spouter Inn and of the start of their ‘bosom’ friendship; I also enjoyed reading how Ishmael and Queequeg get taken on to work as whalers on the ship ‘Pequod’ and of Ishmael’s initial meeting with the grizzled one-legged seafarer, Captain Ahab, who is intent on exacting his revenge on Moby Dick; and I enjoyed the author’s descriptions of situation and setting aboard a nineteenth century sailing ship.
What I found a bit difficult was the amount of information about the whaling industry, some of which I found rather upsetting, especially where the author writes about the hunting of female whales with calves, and although some of the information was very interesting (for example: how if a male whale is attacked its fellow males will hastily make their escape, but if a female whale is attacked, other females will try to help her) there was too much that I found discomfiting. I also found there to be a little too much in the way of extraneous information and too many digressions for this story to work well for me and although I know the author had a purpose in writing in this way, I have to admit to finding parts of this book rather wearing.
I am aware that this book is a great American classic and has other themes apart from those that are immediately obvious, and I did enjoy parts of the story and found the ending totally gripping - however, despite being informed that this novel improves with subsequent readings, it's most probably not a book I would pick up again. In summary, I'm glad I finally got around to reading 'Moby Dick', but I’m also rather glad I’ve finished it too.
3 Stars.
I had hoped to buy some more of this range, but I won’t be doing that now. If you want a hardback (and I do) get a different edition. A wasted opportunity. Avoid.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 26, 2018






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