Moby-Dick, or the Whale by Herman Melville (Part 1 of 2)

People who pay attention to my reading stats (lololol) might notice that I have not completed an ebook on my Kindle since September. This is because I have been reading Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. This is a classic I've been meaning to read forever and since this was the year of Big Books, I dove in. 

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I think I'm going to do this review in two parts. Today I'll talk about Melville and do a review and then tomorrow I'll do my lines of note, things I looked up (SO MUCH), and hat mentions. Strap in. I've been reading this book for literal months. 

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Does anyone actually know the plot of Moby-Dick? (I sure didn't.)

It starts with the sentence "Call me Ishmael" and immediately you're on guard. Okay, fine, but is that your actual name, Ishmael? Are you an unreliable narrator? You sound unreliable from the first three words!

Note: All page numbers come from the Kindle ebook I used. 

So we're calling the narrator Ishmael and we're basically introduced to him through this very, very hilarious description of his state of mind:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. (page 17)

(My husband and I used to tell each other not to murder anyone when we go into a crowded situation - usually the grocery store - but now we've taken to reminding the other not to knock people's hats off. We are amused if no one else is.)

So Ishmael goes to sea with a ragtag assortment of folks on the Pequod. This includes Queequeg, a harpooner who just happens to be a cannibal; Starbuck, the Quaker mate from Nantucket; and Captain Ahab, an absolute batshit crazy guy who is obsessed with finding a white whale - the one and only Moby Dick - who had bit his leg off and forced him to use a fake leg. 

“Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye.” (page 190)

A handful of adventures ensue, but it's mostly Ishmael's deep dives into whales, whaling, and life on a ship, Ahab's insane rants, and some incredibly repulsive descriptions of killing sea creatures. 

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Who is Herman Melville? 

Melville was born into a financially stable family in New York City in 1819. His family died, however, and his family was broke as a joke, so he signed up to a common sailor on the merchant ship St. Lawrence and then to a whaler named Acushset. He wrote a couple of books based on his travel adventures, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), and that set him up financially for a time.

Moby-Dick came out in 1851. Trivia alert. Moby-Dick the title of the book has a hyphen, but no where in the book itself does Melville use a hyphen. So if I'm writing about the whale, I'll use Moby Dick (no hyphen), but if I'm writing about the book, I'm going to be pedantic and use a hyphen. 

The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in November. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor and on wide reading in whaling literature for his vivid and sometimes disgusting descriptions of sailing, whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. 

(For those of you playing along in NGS reading lore, the sinking of the Essex is the basis of my beloved In the Heart of the Sea and is responsible, in large part, for my decision to read Moby-Dick.)

Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Whomp. Whomp. 

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So what did you think?

Um. Hm. That's a good question. 

Ishmael is hilarious. As a narrator, I found his voice to be entrancing. I found his enthusiasm for all things whales to be contagious. 

So I was on board, truly, for his in-depth discussions of everything whale - a biological classification, fictional stories, a breakdown of the skeleton, detailed anatomical structures, how to catch one, flensing whales (NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED), ambergris, barrels of whale oil, and everything else. I was mostly on board for his in-depth musings on things that came to mind when he thought about whales, including the symbolism of particular animals and colors (whales and white, mostly), man as the top predator, fate, free will, and obsession. 

What I was not here for, it turns out, was Ahab's monomaniacal obsession. As soon as Ahab started talking, I'd find myself zoning out. I also found myself zoning out about religion, but that's par for the course with me. 

While this book is nominally about whaling, it's obviously really about man versus nature and who is top dog. Nature isn't just the white whale, but taking to the sea to collect oil so that people on the shore can light their way at night. It's about loyalty, revenge, and problem solving. It's about life and death, light and dark, and, of course, killing that fucking whale. 

It also took a lot of time before the real "action" started. It wasn't until almost 100 pages in that we actually saw the Pequod:

...were three ships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-Dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. (page 91 - first mention!)

Description of the Pequod:

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that. (page 92)

Then it was still more time before we actually set sail:

At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, (page 125 - we set sail!)

Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. (page 129)

So, the first part of the book was really not that exciting unless you like sermons about Jonah and reading about how cold it is in New England during winter. 

But, just wait until tomorrow when I post all the things I had to look up. Melville had a much more classical and Biblical training than I did and I did not understand a lot of his references and allusions. However, the Internet is an amazing thing and have you heard of Power Moby-Dick? It's a FREE online annotated copy of Moby-Dick. I used the heck out of it. 

I'm glad I read it, but I will not be reading it again. 3.5/5 stars (I guess - this was hard to rate!)

Have you read Moby-Dick? Are you going to?