Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Herman Melville
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
140 chapters
3.57from 633,625 ratingson Goodreads
Ishmael signs on to a Nantucket whaler and discovers, once they are at sea, that the captain has no interest in filling the hold. Ahab lost a leg to a white whale and has brought the Pequod out to find it. Around that chase Melville built everything he knew about whales, work, and what a man will take a crew into.
About the book
Published in 1851, Moby-Dick begins with Ishmael’s decision to go to sea and his friendship with the harpooner Queequeg before they join the Pequod. Once underway, Captain Ahab reveals an obsessive determination to find the white whale Moby Dick, turning a commercial whaling voyage towards his personal purpose. Herman Melville mixes adventure with essays, sermons, jokes, stage-like scenes and detailed accounts of whales and whaling. Ishmael’s narration ranges far beyond the immediate plot, using the ship and its multinational crew to think about nature, labour, belief, fate and the limits of human knowledge.
Characters
Ishmael — Narrator
A reflective sailor who joins the Pequod and narrates the voyage with curiosity about people and whales.
Captain Ahab — Pequod’s captain
The commanding captain of the Pequod, consumed by his determination to pursue the white whale.
Queequeg — Harpooner
A skilled harpooner from the Pacific who becomes Ishmael’s close friend before they join the Pequod.
Starbuck — First mate
The Pequod’s prudent first mate, an experienced whaler uneasy with risks that exceed the voyage’s purpose.
Stubb — Second mate
The cheerful and irreverent second mate, known for meeting danger with jokes and composure.
Flask — Third mate
The short, energetic third mate, practical and aggressive in the ordinary business of whaling.
Fedallah — Harpooner
A mysterious harpooner closely associated with Ahab and the captain’s private pursuit of Moby Dick.
About the author
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short-story writer and poet who went to sea at twenty and drew on it for the rest of his life. Moby-Dick, published in 1851, sold poorly and confused its reviewers; Melville spent his last decades working as a customs inspector in New York, his books out of print. The reappraisal came thirty years after his death, and the novel is now read as the central American epic. Billy Budd, found unfinished among his papers, was not published until 1924.