Herman Melville's Moby Dick

by Harold Bloom (Editor)

One of the masterpieces of American fiction, Moby-Dick remains a classic in the world's literature of the sea. The characters in this powerful tale continue to haunt us, including Captain Ahab, Starbuck, Ishmael, and the rest of the crew.

The title, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Herman Melville, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.

Genres: Classics, Literary Criticism, Literature, Fiction

159 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently re-read (again) MOBY DICK, I was jonesing for a little academic analysis, and the local library offered up this collection, an anthology of eight essays spanning the 20th century and its various "schools" and critical approaches: biographical, Freudian, formalist, historical, rhetorical, etc. The range of essays provides a decent overview of the various approaches to America's greatest novel, and they provided me with some fresh insights (as well as a reminder of how tiresome academic writing can be at times). Editor Harold Bloom's Introduction is actually the strongest piece in the book (he probably whipped it off before his morning coffee), placing MOBY DICK in the context of Melville's other work to demonstrate similar themes but also point how different, and remarkable, this masterpiece is. (Though I do feel Bloom overdoes the "Gnosticism" stuff a bit.) Bloom gets bonus points for calling up Faulkner's observation that Ahab's fate is "a sort of Golgotha of the heart become immutable as bronze in the sonority of its plunging ruin," and near the end of the essay he highlights a line from the novel that may be the key to its interpretation (if indeed there is a key, and if the novel can even be interpreted). From, (of course), Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale": "Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright."

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

[June 24, 2025] So reading Moby-Dick had been on my bucket list for a number of years. Finally at age 67 I took the plunge and read it. Judging from the reactions of others it seems to be a love it or hate it book. I did not love it (or hate it for that matter). But I found it intriguing enough to read this book of essays to see if I may have been missing something. I think the problem with reading literary analyses is that critics may tend to find themes in the text that the author never intended. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I especially found intriguing the essay, "Moby-Dick as Revolution," where the author points out that "modern political extractions were largely unrecognizable to Melville's contemporaries, Rather than have his characters spout politics, Melville has us dig for their politics in the subterranean recesses of being and sexuality." But does he really? Did Melville expect that we would dig for political and sexual themes in his book? I am particularly skeptical that Melville wrote homoerotic themes into Moby-Dick. This idea reminded me of those people who suggest that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual because he occasionally shared a bed with a man. I just don’t think this had the same meaning in the 19th century that it has in the 21st century. I am also skeptical that Ahab's missing leg represents repressed sexual loss, an idea taken up not only in this essay but in at least one other as well. Did Melville really see the leg as a phallic symbol? Perhaps the authors of these essays had access to others of Melville's writings or notes that suggest these themes? Maybe I should not be so skeptical.

My interest in Moby-Dick was renewed enough by these essays that I ordered the Norton's Critical Edition of Moby-Dick. When it arrives, I will read it and rereserve this collection of essays to reread. One thing I missed while reading these essays was having a copy of Moby-Dick handy to read the chapters that were often referenced in these essays. One chapter that was often referenced was "The Whiteness of the Whale." It would have been nice to have a copy of Moby-Dick nearby to refresh my memory on these points.

Once I get my copy of Moby-Dick firmly in hand I intend to reread these essays. I have already reread two essays; first of all Harold Bloom's introductory essay (which got high praise from many Goodreads reviewers) and "The Question of Race in Moby-Dick", which I found particularly intriguing. Are we really to imagine that Ishmael and Ahab are intended to be mulattos? Are their unusual names a clue? One thing I realized while reading this essay is that Ishmael is likely a self-chosen name, not the man's given name. Why would you give yourself a common slave name? It is all very interesting to say the least and something I will pay attention to on my rereading of Moby-Dick.

I wasn’t jumping up and down about Harold Bloom's essay the way some reviewers were. This guy finds gnostic themes in everything. I am a student of Gnosticism (albeit ancient Gnosticism not modern Gnosticism) and I didn’t see anything gnostic about Moby-Dick. Admittedly I am not the sharpest crayon in the box when it comes to literary criticism. So again, on my reread I will have to pay more careful attention and see if I can pick up on what Bloom is talking about. Was Melville a believer in the Demiurge as Bloom suggests? Again, Bloom may have access to personal notes of Melville's that suggest he was, so I will withhold judgement for now.

[Edit: July 25, 2025] So I have followed through on my plan which I elucidated in my initial review of this collection of essays. I have read the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick as well as having reread these essays. My opinion of Moby-Dick hasn’t changed particularly. I would rate it 3.5 stars as opposed to my initial 3 star rating. The brutality of whaling simply makes it difficult for me as a 21st century reader to be jumping up and down about this book. But it is more than that. I really loved the initial chapters, and the annotations in the Norton Critical Edition highlighted for me especially the humorous aspects of these chapters, a feature noted by a number of essays in this collection. But then one hits the so-called slog chapters, and I think it takes some patience to get through these. In his essay, John Bryant calls the book "structurally problematic" and I tend to agree with him.

One feature of Moby-Dick that I paid particular attention to on a reread was the madness of Ahab, and I was delighted that there were two essays in this collection that paid particular attention to that subject: Henry Nash Smith’s and Charles Olson's. But although Melville portrays Ahab as insane, especially in the last 1/3 of the book, Ahab is not *just* a madman, he is also heroic. So Harold Bloom writes, "When Ishmael cries out, 'Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?' he refutes all those critics, moral and psychoanalytic, who condemn Ahab as being immoral or insane." And Alfred Kazin posits that Ahab is not just a madman but a hero trying to reassert humanity's place in nature.

It was nice having my own copy of Moby-Dick so I could look up the references in this collection when necessary. A number of essays referenced the chapter "The Lee Shore," so of course I reread that one. Bulkington sure seems to get a lot of attention from the critics for such a minor character. Critics are falling all over themselves to speculate what he symbolizes. I don’t think we can know what, if anything, Melville had specifically in mind in creating Bulkington, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is ok. A book group on Facebook suggested that most of us play a movie in our head when we read a book and, I think, we all play different movies when we read a book. This, I think is the point. Two essays came up with two different interpretations for "A squeeze of the hand," Carolyn Karcher seeing it as homoerotic and John Bryant seeing it as masturbatory. I didn’t get any of that imagery. In my movie what was being squeezed was whale sperm, not human sperm.

In the same way I felt that some of the imagery of slavery seen in some of these essays was rather far fetched. While I thing Fred Bernard is correct in tracing down references to the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator in Melville's writings, indicating Melville had read it, I could not agree with Homer Pettey that the discussion of whale anatomy is a "thinly disguised metaphor for human beings." He is certainly wrong to say that zeuglodon (the name of an extinct whale referenced in Moby-Dick) comes from a Greek word meaning "slave yoke" (that would certainly be a wild coincidence!). In fact zeuglodon comes from two Greek words meaning "yoked teeth," because of the double-rooted construction of the zeuglodon's teeth.

One thing that was annoying was that page numbers were often referenced in these essays without any indication of which edition of Moby-Dick was being referred to. Perhaps the Northwestern-Newberry edition, which John Bryant claims in his essay is the standard edition? A collection of Melville letters was also sometimes referenced by page number. I suppose there is a standard volume of these too which is used by scholars. Would it have been too much to clue us non-scholars in on what volumes were being referenced here?

[Pat Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

some chapters are better than others. The last two were very interesting views on M-D.

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?

When I read this I though - hum, sounds like what a workaholic would say, or perhaps should think and say!

[Mahmoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?,” God’s taunting question to Job. Can be said to be answered by Captain Ahab with a “Yes!” in thunder.
Harold Bloom

[Wesley]

DNF. Sometimes I feel, why read this literary criticism, when I could be reading more fiction?

[Sohail · Rating 4 out of 5]

The quality of the articles in this book is inconsistent. Some of them are very good, and some are not so. It was an insightful book about Herman Melville's Moby Dick, but I liked Bloom's guide to John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' more than this one.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives me a Transcendental boner. Plus, the image of Captain Ahab, his peg-leg and the worn out hole on the deck still makes me laugh. Its a big, hefty tome, but totally worth the effort.

[Shannon Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned that you don't mess with the whale.