Moby Dick is the legendary whale that many whalers have seen
and heard about but none have been able to kill. When a run-in with the whale causes the loss
of Captain Ahab’s leg he becomes obsessed with meeting the whale again to get
his revenge.
A lot of people are familiar with this story but
fewer people have ever read it. Until
now I was one of those people. And I
could see why people would be put off by this book. It’s a good story, even a great story. But it is long. And Ismael, our narrator, is verbose to say
the least. You have to be patient with
him. You are a hundred pages into the
book before you even get on the ship. It
is a long time after that before you see any whales and a lot longer after that
that you get to see Moby Dick himself.
It’s not that nothing happens in the meantime. You get to know the crew and Ahab and you get
to see the effect that the captain’s obsession with the famous whale has on him
and his crew. Which is all good
stuff. But Ismael goes on and on about
everything. He gives you a catalog of
all the whales he has seen represented in art and tells you how close they are
to the real thing; he gives you a catalog of all the known whales; he
discourses on the greatness of man. And there
is a lot of sailing going on. I’ve never
read anything else by Melville so I don’t know if it is author or the narrator
that tends to be so wordy and tangential but for me there were long passages
where I was at a loss as to what they added to the story and, quite frankly, I
could have done without. Even with all
of those things I really liked it but I’m glad I was reading another book at
the same time or it might have become monotonous.
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