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Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
by Herman Melville

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153747.Moby_Dick_or_The_Whale?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172252878m/153747.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153747.Moby_Dick_or_The_Whale?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Moby-Dick: or, The Whale</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1624.Herman_Melville">Herman Melville</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32348987?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 2 of 5 stars LISA: Dad, you can't take revenge on an animal. That's the whole point of Moby Dick.
 HOMER: Oh Lisa, the point of Moby Dick is 'be yourself.'
 -- The Simpsons
 
 So, what really is the point of Moby Dick? Is it about obsession? The things that drive each of us in our ambitions, whether they be wealth, hate, prejudice or love? Is it a deconstruction of Puritan culture in colonial America? Is it a Joseph Campbell-esque heroic tale? Is it a good ol' yarn of men against the sea? Is it all of these things?
 
 Perhaps.
 
 Is it a colossal bore?
 
 Decidedly. 
 
 Having never harpooned a whale, I can only assume that it is slightly easier than finishing this dense, mammoth work of CLASSIC literature. I found it almost impenetrable. Like reading Hawthorne, except it doesn't end, ever. It took me three times to read it. Indeed, it had become my white whale. Finally, I brought it to work and forced myself to read twenty pages a day at lunch. As a result I: (1) finished the book; and (2) have a Pavlovian hatred to lunch. 
 
 Moby Dick is about a milquetoast named Ishmael (One wonders: is that his real name? He says "Call me Ishmael," implying he has been called other things) who sets out on a whaling ship called the Pequod. Ishmael doesn't do much, except offer endless exegeses on every aspect of whaling, as well as stultifying digressions on how the color white can be evil. Ishmael's ramblings will soon have you pleading for the whale - or a squid or an eel or a berserk seagull - to eat Ishmael, and eat him quickly (but painfully) so the book will end. 
 
 The Pequod is commanded by Captain Ahab, the one-legged nut who is obsessed with finding the whale that ate his leg. He's sort of the 19th century version of the psycho ex-boyfriend who just can't seem to let go the past. Ahab is an interesting character in the abstract. Profoundly, almost suicidally driven. A compelling character. However, in the context of the book's thees and thous and utterly excessive verbiage, the sheen wears off mighty quick. There's some other characters, notably Queequeg, the South Seas cannibal with whom Ishmael shares a bed, and a totally homoerotic night (a scene that has launched a thousand dissertations). Then there's Starbuck, the first mate, and Stubb, the second mate. Or is it the other way around? I don't really care. They all end up in the same place. Hint: think Jonah. (Melville really harps on this Biblical allusion, as he harps on everything). 
 
 There was one passage I really liked, though. It occurs when Pip, the black cabin boy/court jester, who falls out of one of the longboats and is left in the ocean. He goes mad and, in a Shakespearian twist, also becomes a prophet: 
 
 "The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmate's called him mad." 
 
 I'm immensely fond of this passage, and that chapter in general. I like the idea that Pip had gone to the border-world between life and death and, because he toed that line, saw through some of the mystery, to where the soul and God are one. 
 
 Other than that, I am none to fond of this book. It is tedious. Detail-laden. Attention-demanding. Then, after 56 billion pages, the climax comes very quickly (ha ha ha), and in a matter of a few pages, everything you learned about the ship, the knots that held the sails, the crewmembers, Ahab - everything - is for naught, because it's all gone, and the sea rolls on, as it has for a thousand years. In a way, it's kind of cool to do it that way; I mean, that's life. You don't always get a great death scene. But on the other hand, what a gyp!
 
 I consider myself a high functioning individual. I usually dismiss criticisms that are centered around the "it was boring" school of reasoning. Here, it's not just boring, but it's hard to understand. The language is eloquent, yes, but also ancient. The metaphors and allusions are ancient as well, requiring constant use of the endnotes. 
 
 In short, I would rather be harpooned, fall off my ship, get eaten by a great white shark, and then have the great white shark swallowed by a whale, then read this book ever again. 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1232712?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Matt's review
rating:

recommended for: People I despise

LISA: Dad, you can't take revenge on an animal. That's the whole point of Moby Dick.
HOMER: Oh Lisa, the point of Moby Dick is 'be yourself.'
-- The Simpsons

So, what really is the point of Moby Dick? Is it about obsession? The things that drive each of us in our ambitions, whether they be wealth, hate, prejudice or love? Is it a deconstruction of Puritan culture in colonial America? Is it a Joseph Campbell-esque heroic tale? Is it a good ol' yarn of men against the sea? Is it all of these things?

Perhaps.

Is it a colossal bore?

Decidedly.

Having never harpooned a whale, I can only assume that it is slightly easier than finishing this dense, mammoth work of CLASSIC literature. I found it almost impenetrable. Like reading Hawthorne, except it doesn't end, ever. It took me three times to read it. Indeed, it had become my white whale. Finally, I brought it to work and forced myself to read twenty pages a day at lunch. As a result I: (1) finish...more

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