Moby Dick
ForumSomeone explain it to me...
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1bibliobeck
I've read it, but it was such hard work for me. I just don't get it. I've read various reviews and websites extolling its virtues and I've tried and tried with it but I just can't see it. I'd love to understand what I'm missing. I think about reading it again to see what I missed first time around, but I can't seem to face it. Am I alone??
2atimco
I actually like Moby-Dick (sorry, not to make you feel more alone!). I do know a lot of people who just couldn't get into it, and it may just not be your thing. And that's okay.
But here are the reasons I liked it:
• Melville is able to create such an atmosphere of doom. It's tangible. From the streetside prophet who warns Ishmael of the doom to come on the voyage, to the sermon about Jonah, to the chapter that explores the psychological terror of the color white, it just builds and builds and builds. In some ways the chapters about the details of whaling are like a break from the intensity of the writing!
• Right from the very start there is a sense of mystery — why would the narrator choose to be called Ishmael? There has to be Biblical significance, or else he would just say "My name is Ishmael." His past is unknown, and it's interesting to try to figure him out without any background clues.
• I actually found the eyewitness feel of the details of whaling quite fascinating (I know I am strange for this!). A lot of that information could be found in a textbook, but the way it's presented, in the context of characters and story, makes it interesting.
• You can come up with countless metaphors for Moby-Dick. He is God: harsh, stern, and cruel (not a view I subscribe to, by the way). He is the universe, which man must constantly fight. He is destiny. He is the forces of nature rebelling against man's domination. He is all the forces before which we feel helpless. If you start to think about the Whale as a force in your own life, something you cannot control, you might just start empathizing with Ahab a bit! His crazed defiance and determination are certainly insane by all normal standards, but maybe he's the one who has the clearest picture of what life is really like. Maybe the rest of us are coddling ourselves, too afraid to take up a harpoon and die valiantly. Who knows?
There's just so much to puzzle out with Melville. I don't go for the postmodern readings that see hints of homosexuality between Ishmael and Queequeg (in the bed together), or repressed sexual desire in a bucket of sperm. I studied this book in college and, as one of my classmates said, sometimes a bucket of sperm is just a bucket of sperm! :-P But if that's an area that interests you, you could certainly approach the novel with those interpretations in mind.
• I just really love Melville's writing. It is so confident; he never falters. It is also very male. I like getting into the author's world and letting myself get carried away on a strong wave of good writing.
Hmm, I've written quite a bit. Maybe I should throw this all into a review. And I know I could say more...
But here are the reasons I liked it:
• Melville is able to create such an atmosphere of doom. It's tangible. From the streetside prophet who warns Ishmael of the doom to come on the voyage, to the sermon about Jonah, to the chapter that explores the psychological terror of the color white, it just builds and builds and builds. In some ways the chapters about the details of whaling are like a break from the intensity of the writing!
• Right from the very start there is a sense of mystery — why would the narrator choose to be called Ishmael? There has to be Biblical significance, or else he would just say "My name is Ishmael." His past is unknown, and it's interesting to try to figure him out without any background clues.
• I actually found the eyewitness feel of the details of whaling quite fascinating (I know I am strange for this!). A lot of that information could be found in a textbook, but the way it's presented, in the context of characters and story, makes it interesting.
• You can come up with countless metaphors for Moby-Dick. He is God: harsh, stern, and cruel (not a view I subscribe to, by the way). He is the universe, which man must constantly fight. He is destiny. He is the forces of nature rebelling against man's domination. He is all the forces before which we feel helpless. If you start to think about the Whale as a force in your own life, something you cannot control, you might just start empathizing with Ahab a bit! His crazed defiance and determination are certainly insane by all normal standards, but maybe he's the one who has the clearest picture of what life is really like. Maybe the rest of us are coddling ourselves, too afraid to take up a harpoon and die valiantly. Who knows?
There's just so much to puzzle out with Melville. I don't go for the postmodern readings that see hints of homosexuality between Ishmael and Queequeg (in the bed together), or repressed sexual desire in a bucket of sperm. I studied this book in college and, as one of my classmates said, sometimes a bucket of sperm is just a bucket of sperm! :-P But if that's an area that interests you, you could certainly approach the novel with those interpretations in mind.
• I just really love Melville's writing. It is so confident; he never falters. It is also very male. I like getting into the author's world and letting myself get carried away on a strong wave of good writing.
Hmm, I've written quite a bit. Maybe I should throw this all into a review. And I know I could say more...
3bibliobeck
Thanks for the reply Wisewoman. I'm always interested to know what others love about a particular book and I can see you write very passionately about this one. I read such a lot about the metaphors of this book and I can see them absolutely, but I couldn't follow them through because I found getting through the book on a surface level such a tough job. I didn't really enjoy the chapters detailing the whaling and knots and boats and such either - I think you're right, it's just not for me, but I still enjoy hearing what others liked about it.
4yarb
I agree with mosr of what wisewoman says. But!
The short chapters are what make "Moby-Dick" Moby-Dick. You're supposed to read it in bits - to have a little bit of it sink into you every day. A modern book in that respect.
I love Moby-Dick for the way the obsession is not just about love, or death, or destiny, or a personal thing, but all and any of those things. Moby-Dick is about the will against the world - anyone with a will has identified with that.
I also like the documentary bits, because of the geekishness with which they're included.
But it's the overpowering charactert of the whale that you've got to get here. You've got to get the whale - the title character is the most important. As you read every chapter, think about the whale (and about Ahab I suppose) but ignore the rest of them, they don't count. Then see what you reckon.
Good one this.
The short chapters are what make "Moby-Dick" Moby-Dick. You're supposed to read it in bits - to have a little bit of it sink into you every day. A modern book in that respect.
I love Moby-Dick for the way the obsession is not just about love, or death, or destiny, or a personal thing, but all and any of those things. Moby-Dick is about the will against the world - anyone with a will has identified with that.
I also like the documentary bits, because of the geekishness with which they're included.
But it's the overpowering charactert of the whale that you've got to get here. You've got to get the whale - the title character is the most important. As you read every chapter, think about the whale (and about Ahab I suppose) but ignore the rest of them, they don't count. Then see what you reckon.
Good one this.
5LisaShapter
I don't find the homosexual reading postmodern or strange at all. The more I read about the friendship between Melville and Hawthorne, Melville's travels in Polynesia, the influence of Two Years Before the Mast (which also has a strong male friendship), and the winking humor (http://theoldyorker.com/2008/09/12/moby-dick-joke/), "A Squeeze of the Hand", the one change in actual whaling practice being made to link Ishmael and Queequeg (who are married, in Ishmael's own words), and the fact Melville lived during a time when it was not a topic that could be written about openly (E. M. Forester, who lived after Melville, stopped writing rather than producing books with homosexual characters, as he dearly wished) are all good reasons to read the book that way.
However, that's not the charm of the book. Moby-Dick is unexpectedly funny (read Ishmael's attempts to sleep on a wooden bench in the "lobby" of the Spouter Inn), less about clear-cut good and evil than it seems to be, and full of unexpected changes of genre and voice.
Try reading only one chapter at a time. Skim the parts about whale anatomy. Get an edition (like the Norton Critical Edition) with good footnotes, a lot of the weird parts of the book are allusions to the Bible and history. (Why is this old coot named Elijah accosting them at the dock? (Reads footnote.) Oh, Elijah's prophet in the Bible and parts of his story ties into this one.)
Melville destroyed a Bible with the number of cards he put between its pages and the notes he wrote in the margins: it's less that he was religious and more that he had a lot to say *about* religion. Get an edition with pictures (I'm not kidding, there's a lovely one with period whaling prints.) And always always remember that this is an unfinished book: Melville's publishers snatched it out from under his hands so we are reading a draft.
Remember that this isn't an adventure story about hunting an albino whale: it's a microcosm of humanity crammed on a boat (or at least an ocean.)
Finally, read Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith (at least you'll feel like you have good company if Moby-Dick bores you), and try to find Laurie Anderson's piece based on Moby-Dick (it explains a lot without having to trawl through dense Melville biographies and stuffy studies on the book's symbolism.)
However, that's not the charm of the book. Moby-Dick is unexpectedly funny (read Ishmael's attempts to sleep on a wooden bench in the "lobby" of the Spouter Inn), less about clear-cut good and evil than it seems to be, and full of unexpected changes of genre and voice.
Try reading only one chapter at a time. Skim the parts about whale anatomy. Get an edition (like the Norton Critical Edition) with good footnotes, a lot of the weird parts of the book are allusions to the Bible and history. (Why is this old coot named Elijah accosting them at the dock? (Reads footnote.) Oh, Elijah's prophet in the Bible and parts of his story ties into this one.)
Melville destroyed a Bible with the number of cards he put between its pages and the notes he wrote in the margins: it's less that he was religious and more that he had a lot to say *about* religion. Get an edition with pictures (I'm not kidding, there's a lovely one with period whaling prints.) And always always remember that this is an unfinished book: Melville's publishers snatched it out from under his hands so we are reading a draft.
Remember that this isn't an adventure story about hunting an albino whale: it's a microcosm of humanity crammed on a boat (or at least an ocean.)
Finally, read Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith (at least you'll feel like you have good company if Moby-Dick bores you), and try to find Laurie Anderson's piece based on Moby-Dick (it explains a lot without having to trawl through dense Melville biographies and stuffy studies on the book's symbolism.)
