Introduction :-
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written".Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modelled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale, Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God.
The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in November.
About the Novelist :-
Herman Melville ( August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticised account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival, and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he travelled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
Summary of the Novel :-
Moby Dick begins with Ishmael following his impulse to go to sea. He meets Queequeg, and they join the crew of the Pequod together. Once the ship is out to sea, Ahab introduces himself to the crew and declares his mission to kill Moby Dick. He offers a gold doubloon to the first crew member to spot Moby Dick. The voyage begins with several unsuccessful hunts, but they eventually manage to catch and process several whales. Two crew members, Tashteego and Pip, nearly lose their lives. Tashteego falls into a whale's head during processing. He is saved by a quick-thinking Queequeg. Pip, a child, is briefly lost at sea. Both survive, but Pip is traumatized and subsequently takes on a prophetic role. Queequeg falls ill shortly thereafter and asks that a coffin be built for him. He recovers and uses the coffin as storage.
By this point, they have entered the Indian Ocean. A crew member named Fedallah prophesies Ahab's death. The specifics of the prophecy lead Ahab to believe that he will not die at sea. Soon after, the Pequod encounters an electric storm. An electrical charge struck the ship's mast and created a rare phenomenon known as St. Elmo's Fire. The ship was briefly engulfed in an otherworldly glow. Ahab interprets this as a sign that his mission is fated to succeed. Starbuck considers it an ominous sign from God. The Pequod loses its first crew member as the storm subsides, foreshadowing the crew's fate.
Ahab pursues Moby Dick toward the equator. They encounter two ships that have lost crew members in recent battles with the whale. Finally, the crew of the Pequod spots Moby Dick. For three days Ahab and his crew pursue the white whale from their whaleboats. On the first day, Moby Dick attacks and sinks Ahab's whaleboat. On the second day, Fedullah is trapped in the harpoon line attached to Moby Dick. He is pulled overboard and dies. On the final day of the pursuit, Moby Dick rams the Pequod itself, sinking it. Ahab and all his crew, save one, go down with the ship. Ishmael alone survives, using Queequeg's coffin as a lifeboat.
Characters in Moby Dick :-
Moby Dick is an epic novel with an extensive list of characters. The following characters are those most central to the plot.
Ishmael
Ishmael is the first-person narrator of Moby Dick. The novel famously begins with his statement, ''Call me Ishmael.'' He joins the crew of the Pequod because he is seeking both adventure and emotional relief.
''Ishmael explains, 'Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily passing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet. . .then, I find it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.' ''
Ishmael shares Ahab's fascination with Moby Dick, but does not share the captain's disdain for the white whale. Ishmael's character serves as a foil to Captain Ahab. Ishmael is a philosopher at heart. His worldview is always adapting as he takes in new information and experiences.
Ishmael is one of several characters in Moby Dick whose name has biblical significance. The biblical Ishmael was rejected by his father in favor of his younger brother. Similarly, Melville's Ishmael considers himself an outcast. The biblical Ishmael is banished to the desert. Melville's Ishmael voluntarily turns to the sea as a balm.
Queegueg
Queequeg is a harpooner aboard the Pequod. He is a prince from a fictional island in the South Pacific. His tribe practices cannibalism. Queequeg joins the crew at the same time as Ishmael, and they become friends. He is loyal, generous, and brave.
Queequeg embodies many racist stereotypes. His culture is an amalgam of cultural generalities and stereotypes. Some interpretations posit that this collection of cultures personified demonstrates a theme of humanity's universality. Perhaps this was Melville's intention. Either way, Queequeg is presented as a noble savage, and Ishmael is depicted as enlightened for learning to see Queequeg's humanity.
After a serious illness at sea, Queequeg builds himself a coffin in the shape of a canoe. He is motivated to do so because he feels he is near death, even after he fully recovers. Queequeg believes that a person decides when they will die. In this way, he exemplifies the theme of free will in Moby Dick. He imagines the coffin as a fusion of a Christian coffin, and the canoes his tribe builds to send their dead out to sea. In the end, Queequeg's empty coffin serves as a life raft for Ishmael.
Captain Ahab
It is in Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick that Melville's theme of man vs. nature is depicted. Melville writes Ahab with a fatal flaw, which is his obsession with killing Moby Dick. Ahab is neither a terrible person nor a terrible captain aside from this flaw, which drives him to pursue Moby Dick to spite intensifying risk. His arrogance infuses him with the belief that he can conquer nature in the form of the white whale.
''What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad-Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac! I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calmed to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and-Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.''
Captain Ahab's hatred of Moby Dick originated with a prior failed pursuit in which Moby Dick escaped after taking Ahab's leg. Since that time, Ahab has single-mindedly hunted it to the far reaches of the sea. Although the symbolic interpretation of the whale is thematically subjective, Captain Ahab definitively sees the whale as the embodiment of evil.
Moby Dick
Moby Dick's behavior within the novel is consistent with a wild animal's. He acts out of an instinct to survive; however, Captain Ahab infuses those actions with nefarious intent. He creates a mythology around the whale that colors the way the crew views Moby Dick as well.
In the white whale, Melville manifests an idea that allows for multiple interpretations. For Ahab, Moby Dick is evil embodied, but Melville's story allows for the whale to simultaneously symbolize God, fate, the natural world, the unknown, America, and the universe in its entirety. Moby Dick exists as a symbol around which Melville's themes develop.
Starbuck
Starbuck is the first mate on the Pequod. He is stoic and religious. He turns to his Christian faith for guidance. He puts his faith in God and believes that his fate is God's will. He shares Queequeg's and Ishmael's concern about Captain Ahab's maniacal obsession. Starbuck even considers killing Ahab to stop his relentless quest, although he does not.
Themes of the Novel :-
The Limits of Knowledge
As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these systems of knowledge, however, including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an adequate account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.
The Deceptiveness of Fate
In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmael’s narrative contains many references to fate, creating the impression that the Pequod’s doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and that fate either doesn’t exist or is one of the many forces about which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits the sailors’ belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in Chapter 99, when various individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that humans project what they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.
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