Moby Dick

Literary fiction · Dark comedy · Tragedy

Print length: 793 pagesPenguin USA, Inc., 2009

Description

Seeking escape from life ashore, Ishmael travels to New Bedford and Nantucket and signs aboard the Pequod as an inexperienced whaleman. He finds companionship with Queequeg and enters a culturally diverse shipboard society bound for a commercial hunt across distant oceans. The voyage changes when Captain Ahab reveals his true purpose: vengeance against Moby Dick, the white sperm whale that took his leg. Ahab’s private obsession gradually claims the labor and loyalty of the entire crew. Around that pursuit, the novel ranges through detailed accounts of whales and maritime work, philosophical reflections, songs, catalogs, poetry, and dramatic scenes, turning an adventure at sea into an expansive inquiry into class, fate, evil, God, and human ambition.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Experimental · Ornate · Poetic

Pace

Variable

Tone

Atmospheric · Dark · Irreverent · Philosophical

Structure

Episodic · Fragmented · Linear

Focus

Ideas · Plot · Voice

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 5 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 5 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

ClassMoralityMortalityObsessionReligion and faithRevenge

About Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet whose work moves between maritime adventure, philosophical inquiry, workplace comedy, satire, and tragedy. His prose can be ornate and allusive, but his structures are just as distinctive. He interrupts narrative with catalogues, essays, songs, dramatic scenes, and extended arguments, allowing a story to widen beyond its immediate action. In Moby Dick, Ishmael’s account of a whaling voyage absorbs technical detail and speculative reflection while Captain Ahab’s pursuit steadily turns commercial labor into a collective obsession. Melville could also work by compression. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” confines its action largely to a Wall Street office, where a lawyer’s orderly narration circles an employee whose quiet refusals defeat every available explanation. The Confidence-Man replaces a conventional plot with linked encounters aboard a Mississippi steamboat, using shifting voices and persuasive talk to test confidence, charity, and fraud. Again and again, Melville places private conviction inside rigid institutions, then follows the strain placed on sympathy, authority, and judgment.

Moby-Dick; or, the WHALE Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Language: English
ISBN: 9781101100394, 9781101100424, 9781101100431

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