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| Good Moby Dick book covers. My favorite is the third one over with the big whale coming up under the small-looking ship. |
If asked before I started reading Moby-Dick a month ago, what the story was about I'd have a fairly short summary ready -- Ishmael, a member of the crew on a whaling ship named the Pequot (I would drag from the back of my brain) is a witness to a maniacal quest by Captain Ahab to exact vengeance on a huge, white whale that bit off his leg on a previous voyage.
In theory my summary was correct but Moby-Dick, my version weighing in at over 850 pages, would be the world's most boring story if that is all it was. The book didn't exactly delight me, but it sure surprised me. Those surprises are what I would like to focus my review on.
First, a little history (thank you Wikipedia) -- Herman Melville published the book in 1851 to mixed reviews and it was not popular, going out of print before the author's death in 1891. In 1919, after the centennial of Melville's birth, William Faulkner said he wished he'd written the book himself and D.H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". That did it. Praise from two guys, famous writers both, and Moby-Dick went back into publication and has never been out of print since. It is now considered one of the great American novels and a fine example of American Renaissance literature (1830-60s).
Melville drew on his own experiences as a sailor from 1841-44 which included spending some time on whaling ships. He also clearly spent A LOT of time reading whaling literature and researching everything the world knew about whales and whaling. This research must have acquainted the author not only with facts but with myths about the behemoths of the sea and also gave him an opportunity to examine renderings of whales by artists, who may or may not have ever seen live whales. The descriptions of these bad paintings/illustrations of whales was one of the highlights of my reading experiences. For example, Ishmael describes a painting of a whale in a New Bedford tavern that is "most appalling" and so "repugnant to all right-thinking artists" that the whale looks like a "blob" or a "dumb-bell" and he makes fun of European engravings that make whales look like distorted pigs or fantastical creatures (Ch. 57). I'm guessing he was referring to something like this:
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| Medieval whale art |
Speaking of whale art, I sure had my pick of whale art on the covers of 1800+ editions of Moby-Dick on Goodreads. Here are some examples of really bad covers, in my opinion:
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| None of these covers advance the story or even inspire me. The book I purchased has no pictures at all, just the words: MOBY-DICK. That was especially bad. |
Whoops, I'm digressing, back to the many surprises and more history about Moby-Dick.
The whale in the book was patterned after a notoriously hard whale to catch, Mocha Dick. I was shocked to learn that whalers actually named some of the whales they sought and could identify others based on their markings. But now that I think about it for a few minutes I realize that whale experts today can do the same thing. Okay, not so shocking. Melville used the story from survivors of the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820 by a sperm whale as his inspiration. The men who survived their ordeal in that sinking had to resort to cannibalism to survive, which explains the references to cannibals in Moby-Dick as the character Queequeg, a tattooed South Sea Islander, is referred to as one.
Melville also spent chapter upon chapter describing the taxonomy of whales, all whales, while exulting the virtues of the sperm whale in particular. Ishmael built a whole catalog of whales and their characteristics and urged future researchers to add to his list as they discovered new details. Parts of the book had that charming, believable aspect to it. If I was the lone survivor of a shipwreck I think I, too, would write a journal of everything I could remember from the voyage, including all the whales I saw (or hoped to see).
In addition to describing various types of whales, Ishmael went into detail on every single part of the superior sperm whale, as he saw it. There was a chapter on the head, a chapter on the body, another on the blowhole. You get the idea. Then there were the chapters on how they killed the whales, which I could not picture in my head, and another how they attached the whale to the boat so they could go to work on rendering it into oil. I have to confess I was morbidly interested in these details. How, on earth, does one do these things with limited technology and tools...no electric winches to help them in that day?
Speaking of "that" day, I could never figure out the years in which Melville set the book. Was it supposed to be a contemporary novel, set in 1850 or set in earlier years? Let's see, A.I. to the rescue, Melville, it says, made references to historical events happening between 1840 and 1842 in the story. There, I answered that question for you and for me. So if the Pequot set out in December 1840, why does Ishmael keep referring to whales as fish? Whales were officially reclassified from "fish" to mammals in 1758. This little detail became a sticking point for me. Clearly Melville, who did all this research on whales for the book, would have known that whales are not fish. Then I wondered if it was a technique he used to show the ignorance, or lack of schooling of some of the crew. I'll never know, but it bothered me.
Melville was greatly influenced by the writings of Sir Thomas Browne and Thomas Carlyle, who I'm not familiar with, and also by both Shakespeare and the Bible, which I am. Whoever/whatever were his influences I'd call the language used in Moby-Dick as stilted. A.I. corrected me and told me that was my opinion, that the language in the book was "archaic, formal, and dense". Okay, whatever. That pretty much says the same thing. Captain Ahab's dialogue and soliloquies were especially elevated, sounding like something straight out of Shakespeare. There were so many "thees" and "thous" in the book I was immediately brought back to my days of reading the King James version of the Bible. I'd guess that the language, alone, would make Moby-Dick almost impenetrable for 21st-century teenagers. In fact, it made reading the book almost impossible for me, too, so I switched from the print version to the audiobook, and let the language flow over me, being read by the excellent narrators chosen for the task by the publisher. It was like watching a Shakespearean play with actors who know what their lines mean and can convey that to the audience through their voice and their actions. It is so much easier to understand than trying to read Shakespeare.
Here is an example from Chapter 31 of one of Ahab's soliloquies. In it he is regaling the wonders of what the whale sees and knows. He clearly loves or reveres the beast which is in direct opposition to how he feels about Moby Dick, another beast and his enemy.
“Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
Have I scared you off yet? One reviewer exclaimed after reading this passage "Oh boy. What a page, what a book!" I have to confess there is poetry and music in the rhythm of the prose and, if read slowly enough, could be thought of as beautiful.
Lest you think the whole book is full of such soliloquies, let me assure you that is not the case. Melville uses songs, poetry, catalogs (which I already mentioned), even stage directions, and asides. The crew speaks in their dialects using colloquialisms and slang. It really is written in a varied and unique style throughout.
Now as to themes -- Clearly the big one, "revenge", is the dominant theme of the book. But there were many other themes, some I expected and need no explanation like "man vs nature" while others surprised me. I'll begin with "race". The crew of the Pequot was made up of 30+ sailors from all over the world. It seemed like just about all races were presented and the men on board were all cool with it. Surprisingly, for the time period in which the book was written, the black man was never called a slave. Bravo, Melville! There was a scene near the beginning of the book where "sexuality/sexual identification" is seemingly in play when Ishmael and Queequeg, bedmates, wake up hugging each other. The scene comes across as very non judgemental and tender. Again, bravo! There is another scene where the sailors joyfully squeeze the congealed spermaceti from the whale's brain. The scene is so highly sexualized (it's almost funny) and Ishmael feels a loving, almost manic connection to his crewmates. "Religion" in many forms, not just the protestantism practiced by most New Englanders of the day, were presented, often involving chanting and meditations. God was evoked by Ahab during his further descent into madness, making it clear at least he thought all of this vengeance was sanctioned by God. And then, of course, there was the "madness" which became more and more evident as the story progressed. Ahab rants, "They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!" (Ch.37)
Notice something in that last quote? The first mate is named "Starbuck" and yes, my husband looked it up, the coffee company Starbucks, took their name from this character in Moby-Dick. That is a fun little factoid.
And what of the revenge scene? Compared to the whole book, the last battle between the madman Ahab and Moby Dick, his nemesis, is relatively short -- just a few pages and it is over. Everyone dies except Ishmael and, this was news to me, Moby Dick! Yay. The whale lives to fight another day.
One more thing. Is it "Moby Dick" or "Moby-Dick"? Which is correct? I just looked it up. Moby-Dick, with the hyphen, is the correct title of the book. The original title of the book was Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Moby Dick, without the hyphen, is the name of the whale. Oh dang, now I have to go back and correct myself. I should have looked this up earlier. 😏Common usage goes either way, as you see on the exampled book covers! (See above.) If you want to read more about peculiarities of the use of the hyphen here, see this article in Smithsonian.
So why did I decide to finally tackle this great American novel? I'm not a spring chicken. Shouldn't I have read it by now if was going to read it? Well, two reasons. The first, I decided to do a roundup of all the "Must Read Classics" lists I could find. When I compiled all the lists, Moby-Dick made it on the list at spot #13. Currently I am attempting to read all of the top thirty classics on that list, with only five left to read now that I've finished it. Secondly, every January I pick one big book and challenge myself to read it some time in the upcoming year. Moby-Dick is my One Big Book of 2026. Woot. Woot. I finished it. Everytime I finish a big book I give myself a pat on the back. Now I have joined with all those humans past and present who have also tackled this book and completed it. A whale of an accomplishment! Ha!
