Moby Dick

Author: Herman Melville
Year: 1851

Moby Dick is a bloated whale of a novel. It’s strange to think that Melville’s epic is considered to be the defining work of American Literature, since I can’t think of another novel more unrepresentative of America’s straightforwardness and economy of language. Hemingway, Twain, or even Jack London spring immediately to mind when I think of the American Novel, but Moby Dick? This is not to say that the novel is without immense worth.

What seems most characteristic of Melville’s 100+ chapter behemoth is its slipperiness. For the first third, you think you’re reading a traditional adventure novel, where a curious schoolteacher (call him Ishmael) sets sail on a whaling boat, looking for adventure. Just when the Pequod sets sail, however, you run face-first into a massive hunk of dissertation concerning the anatomy of whales, an encyclopedic summation of every tool used by a whaler, and the history of whaling, among other things. It is as if the reader has suddenly found himself in the middle of one of Ishmael’s schoolhouse lessons, having traded a novel for a textbook. And just when you think you can take no more musing on the consistency of whale sperm (actually ballast fluid and not, as the whalers then believed, reproductive material), the Pequod reaches the prime hunting ground of the Pacific Ocean and the whole novel transforms again, this time into a wild philosophical rambling about the nature of god, the universe, and man’s ability to fathom higher creation.

Each strikingly different section is great in its own way, however, particularly the first and the third. As Ishmael vanishes during the latter chapters of the book, we come to realize that the true main character is the mad Captain Ahab. His presence in the novel is like a solid knot in your gut; an irritation that just won’t let you be. You realize immediately that his quest to avenge himself on the white whale is foolish and futile, yet you can’t help rooting for him every step of the way. He himself realizes that it’s not Moby Dick he seeks to battle, but the unknowable presence behind the blank form of the whale. Ahab is driven by a raging need to know if the suffering and horror of the world is purposeless, or if it’s be driven by an intelligent force. And even if there isn’t anything out there beyond the mask of the knowable world, he wants to strike his harpoon in that form which he can confront and prove his defiance to the vast indifferent cosmic order.

Value: Silver