The Book: Ishmael, who already had a sea career on a merchantman vessel, decides he wants to join a whaling crew. He chooses to join the crew of The Pequod without meeting its captain first. What he doesn't know until the ship sets off is that the captain, Ahab, is on an obsessive quest to find Moby Dick, the great white whale who took off Ahab's leg on an earlier voyage. While Ishmael (and the crew) wait to find Moby Dick, Ishmael (or maybe it's the author) fills the reader in on the biology of whales, the politics of a whaling ship, the character of his crewmates and what it is like to kill a whale and process the whale oil. And along the way there are digressions about life in general and critiques of other authors who have written about whales and whaling. But is this really a book about the search for a whale or is the white whale a metaphor for ... well, your choice.
The Author: Herman Melville
Genre: Fiction (Classic)
Length: 625 pp (paperback Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition); 24 hours by Audiobook (read by Anthony Heald). About halfway through the book I picked up the audiobook and switched back and forth between the two.
One good thing: When they finally find Moby Dick the story becomes quite thrilling. And by that time you have been told so much about whales, whaling ships and how to kill and process a whale in the mid 1800's that it all makes sense and adds to the tension.
One not-so-great thing: As DH Lawrence said: "it is a book of esoteric symbolism of profound significance, and of considerable tiresomeness." It really can get tiresome if you aren't in the mood to know every detail about whales and whaling.
Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":
Story: While reading this, I heard someone I follow on YouTube say that he read Moby Dick last year and hated it. He called it a short story padded to be a really long novel. If you are a plot oriented person who needs a page-turner, who requires fast pacing, you probably will hate this novel too.
Characters: If you are looking for a deep examination of the inner lives of characters this is not the novel for you. Captain Ahab is, of course, a famous character although, surprisingly, he isn't really much in the novel until the end. In fact most of the characters other than Ishmael, the narrator, aren't much in the novel. And Ishmael disappears into a third person narrator for much of the book. We don't even see Moby Dick until toward the end. You can go for many chapters without any real reference to any character. On the other hand, Ahab's madness drives the plot of the novel.
Setting: If you have ever wanted to know what it is like to be a whaler on a whaling ship, this is the novel for you. Even if you never wanted to know, this novel will tell you. By the end you may feel that if you were magically transported back to the mid 1800's onto a whaler, you would do fine.
Writing: This is an odd novel because it doesn't really follow any of the normal rules of novel writing. It is more like a treatise with a story hidden within it. Fortunately, Melville is surprisingly funny, often intentionally but sometimes unintentionally. His descriptions are specific and even I, who have a difficult time visualizing things described in novels, pretty much understood his descriptions. I feel like most of the people who like this novel like it because of Melville's "turns of phrase" which can be very vivid. Be aware that this is a novel of its times and includes all the prejudices of its times.
