Introduction to Moby-Dick
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Plot summary
Interpreting moby dick, context and reception.
What is Moby Dick ?
Why is moby dick a famous novel.
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- Table Of Contents
Moby Dick is a novel by Herman Melville , published in London in October 1851 as The Whale and a month later in New York City as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale . It is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne . Moby Dick is generally regarded as Melville’s magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels.
Where does Moby Dick take place?
The action of Moby Dick takes place largely on Captain Ahab ’s whaling ship, the Pequod , while sailing in the Atlantic , Indian , and Pacific oceans.
How was Moby Dick received when it was first published?
When Moby Dick was first published, the public was unimpressed. It sold fewer than 4,000 copies in total, including fewer than 600 in the United Kingdom. It was not until the mid-20th century that the work was recognized as one of the most important novels in American literature.
What is Moby Dick a metaphor for?
The whale Moby Dick has been interpreted as a metaphor for a great many things, from the Judeo-Christian God to atheism and everything in between. The ambiguity that Herman Melville built into his depiction of the whale makes Moby Dick capacious in its meaning.
Moby Dick gained recognition as an important American novel in the 1920s, more than half a century after its publication. Its fame subsequently grew, not least because it was widely included in university syllabi in the United States, where it was elevated to the status of a great American novel. Moby Dick has endured for two reasons: its virtuosic, bravura writing is a pleasure to read, and its near-mythical characters and plot have proved accommodating to interpretations by successive generations, which have found in the novel representations of imperialism , same-sex marriage , and climate change .
Moby Dick , novel by Herman Melville , published in London in October 1851 as The Whale and a month later in New York City as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale . It is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne . Moby Dick is generally regarded as Melville’s magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels.
Moby Dick famously begins with the narratorial invocation “Call me Ishmael.” The narrator , like his biblical counterpart, is an outcast. Ishmael, who turns to the sea for meaning, relays to the audience the final voyage of the Pequod , a whaling vessel. Amid a story of tribulation, beauty, and madness, the reader is introduced to a number of characters, many of whom have names with religious resonance . The ship’s captain is Ahab , who Ishmael and his friend Queequeg soon learn is losing his mind. Starbuck , Ahab’s first-mate, recognizes this problem too, and is the only one throughout the novel to voice his disapproval of Ahab’s increasingly obsessive behavior. This nature of Ahab’s obsession is first revealed to Ishmael and Queequeg after the Pequod ’s owners, Peleg and Bildad, explain to them that Ahab is still recovering from an encounter with a large whale that resulted in the loss of his leg. That whale’s name is Moby Dick. The Pequod sets sail, and the crew is soon informed that this journey will be unlike their other whaling missions: this time, despite the reluctance of Starbuck, Ahab intends to hunt and kill the beastly Moby Dick no matter the cost.
Ahab and the crew continue their eventful journey and encounter a number of obstacles along the way. Queequeg falls ill, which prompts a coffin to be built in anticipation of the worst. After he recovers, the coffin becomes a replacement lifeboat that eventually saves Ishmael’s life. Ahab receives a prophecy from a crew member informing him of his future death, which he ignores. Moby Dick is spotted and, over the course of three days, engages violently with Ahab and the Pequod until the whale destroys the ship, killing everyone except Ishmael. Ishmael survives by floating on Queequeg’s coffin until he is picked up by another ship, the Rachel . The novel consists of 135 chapters, in which narrative and essayistic portions intermingle, as well as an epilogue and front matter.
Moby Dick can sustain numerous, if not seemingly infinite , readings generated by multiple interpretative approaches. One of the most fruitful ways to appreciate the novel’s complexity is through the names that Melville gave to its characters, many of which are shared with figures of the Abrahamic religions. The very first line of Moby Dick , for instance, identifies Ishmael as the narrator; Ishmael was the illegitimate (in terms of the Covenant) son of Abraham and was cast away after Isaac was born. There are a number of other Abrahamic names in the book as well, including Ahab —who, according to the Hebrew Bible , was an evil king who led the Israelites into a life of idolatry. Melville’s Ahab is obsessed with Moby Dick, an idol that causes the death of his crew. The ship that saves Ishmael, the Rachel , is named for the mother of Joseph , known for interceding to protect her children. It is Rachel, as depicted in the Book of Jeremiah , who convinced God to end the exile placed upon the Jewish tribes for idolatry. The rescue of Ishmael by the Rachel in Moby Dick can thus be read as his return from an exile caused by his complicity (because he was on the Pequod ’s crew) in Ahab’s idolatry of the whale. Melville’s use of these names grants his novel a rich layer of additional meaning.
The whale itself is perhaps the most striking symbol in Moby Dick , and interpretations of its meaning range from the Judeo-Christian God to atheism and everything in between. Between the passages of carefully detailed cetology, the epigraphs, and the shift from a hero’s quest narrative to a tragedy, Melville set the stage for purposeful ambiguity . The novel’s ability to produce numerous interpretations is, perhaps, the main reason it is considered one of the greatest American novels.
Melville himself was well versed in whaling , as he had spent some time aboard the Acushnet , a whaling vessel, which gave him firsthand experience. He also did tremendous amounts of research, consulting a number of scientific sources as well as accounts of historical events that he incorporated into Moby Dick . In particular, the story of the Essex was one that fascinated Melville—and perhaps served as his primary inspiration for the novel. The Essex , a whaling vessel, was attacked by a sperm whale in 1820. The ship sank, and many of the crew members were either lost immediately or died of starvation as they awaited rescue for nearly eight months.
Melville also consulted the story of Mocha Dick, a famed whale who was, like Moby Dick, very white and aggressive and whose name was clearly an inspiration to Melville. Mocha Dick was often found off the coast of Chile in the Pacific Ocean , near Mocha Island. He lived during the early 19th century and became a legend among whalers. In 1839 a story about the whale was written in The Knickerbocker , which was likely the source of Melville’s discovery of Mocha Dick. Unlike Moby Dick, however, Mocha Dick was eventually killed and used for oil.
Melville befriended fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne during the writing of Moby Dick , which led to him dramatically revising the narrative to make it more complex. The novel is dedicated to Hawthorne because of his impact on Melville and the novel.
Once the novel was published, the public was unimpressed. It sold fewer than 4,000 copies in total, with fewer than 600 in the United Kingdom. It was not until the mid-20th century that the novel became recognized as one of the most important novels in American literature .
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Herman Melville
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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Moby-Dick: Introduction
Moby-dick: plot summary, moby-dick: detailed summary & analysis, moby-dick: themes, moby-dick: quotes, moby-dick: characters, moby-dick: symbols, moby-dick: literary devices, moby-dick: quizzes, brief biography of herman melville.
Historical Context of Moby-Dick
Other books related to moby-dick.
- Full Title: Moby Dick; or, The Whale
- When Written: 1850-1851
- Where Written: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
- When Published: 1851
- Literary Period: Pre-Civil War American fiction; the “transcendentalist” and “post-transcendentalist” eras
- Genre: Novel of the sea; whaling novel; episodic novel; novel of ideas; precursor to the modernist novel
- Setting: Primarily on the Pequod, a whaling vessel, throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in the late 1840s
- Climax: On the third day of the chase, Moby Dick causes Ahab to kill himself, by snagging himself in his own harpoon-line; Moby Dick then smashes into the Pequod, drowning all aboard except Ishmael, who lives to report the story of the whale.
- Antagonist: Moby Dick, the White Whale
- Point of View: Mostly first person from Ishmael’s point of view, although a number of sections appear to be narrated by a third-person-like presence, since Ishmael cannot have seen the events being reported in the narrative
Extra Credit for Moby-Dick
Short chapters. Although Moby Dick is often regarded, in the popular imagination, as a novel of interminable length, it is actually divided into 136 rather short chapters—some of which are no longer than a couple paragraphs. This style of writing, in which a larger narrative is broken into much smaller chunks, is known as “episodic” writing.
Alternate title. Perhaps as a way of emphasizing the novel’s concern with whales and whaling, Moby Dick was initially titled The Whale when it was released in England in 1851.
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