Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

A little about the story

Restless and short of money, Ishmael decides that a whaling voyage might offer a remedy for life ashore. His journey takes him into the company of Queequeg and aboard the Pequod, a ship whose varied crew appears united by the practical business of hunting whales. Its captain, however, carries a purpose that is intensely personal: Ahab is determined to find the white whale that has become the focus of his anger.

As that private obsession presses upon the whole ship, the voyage expands into something stranger than a straightforward sea adventure. Herman Melville mixes storms, work, fellowship, and danger with reflections on religion, authority, the natural world, and the difficulty of knowing anything with certainty. Chapters that resemble sermons, stage scenes, or investigations of whale anatomy continually change the reader’s perspective. The result is a book in which the ocean remains both a working environment and an immense challenge to every human attempt to make it mean just one thing.

Things You May Not Know About Moby Dick

• Two first-edition titles. The British edition appeared as The Whale in October 1851, before the American Moby-Dick followed the next month.
• Experience behind the voyage. Melville had served aboard a whaling ship, giving the novel’s accounts of shipboard work a foundation in personal experience.
• A dedication to Hawthorne. The book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose writing and friendship were important to Melville during its composition.
• A deliberate mixture of forms. Narrative chapters share the book with dramatic dialogue, sermons, and detailed discussions of whales and the whaling industry.
• Real ports, fictional ship. New Bedford and Nantucket are actual whaling centers, while the Pequod belongs to Melville’s imagined voyage.