Moby Dick

Written by Herman Melville

Narrated by Bob Sessions

Moby Dick is an epic work of the 19th century, not just in its length or its geographical vastness, but also in the way the main characters, Ahab and Ishmael, are presented to the reader. Ahab is, in true classical tradition, a larger-than-life, almost mythical individual, beyond the reach of the reader's experience. In contrast, Ishmael is a more ordinary character, one to whom the reader can relate. As such, he can narrate the story and also interpret the thoughts and actions of the more grandiose and less accessible Ahab.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780001128

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.

Reviews for Moby Dick

[moekane_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On my should read list list but avoided successfully for 45 years. Between the Philbrick recommendation and the lauds to Hootkins' narration, I finally succumbed and spent nearly a month of commutes taking the big story in, and the next month thinking about the story. SO glad I listened rather than skimmed as a reader. It has everything;. Agree with Floyd 3345 re fiction and nonfiction shelving

[postsbygina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This may be one of the beautifully written pieces of literature I've read. I didn't read this in high school, and never saw it read any excerpt or iteration of this story but I had a general idea that the story was about a man in pursuit of a great whale. Simple. Upon reading it for the first time, however, it's more than just pursuing a whale with an engrossing since of vengeance and passion. It's about passion itself, and the elusive desires that result in less successes than failures. How we pursue our dreams can be the end of us or elevate us.

[selfcallednowhere · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this book going into it because some people had told me it was really boring--it was one of my "I'm *obligated* as a person educated about literature to read this book" additions to my library. But I turned out to really enjoy it. Parts of it were very exciting, the symbolism was intriguing, and even the "whaling manual" stretches I found interesting because I like it when books teach me about things I don't know anything about. The only times it lost me were when it went off on total tangents like "And now I'm gonna describe paintings people have made of whales!" Ishmael/Queequeg are my OTP, and I related just a bit too much to Ahab. A note on this edition: It had a lot of footnotes, which were helpful as far as sailing terms/allusions, but sometimes were a little bothersome when they were trying to explain to you what passages meant.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Though descriptions of the types of whales, whaling, whaling implements, etc. can take up most of this novel (and bore one to tears), there are sections of the book that are absolutely sublime. Ultimately it can be read as a book about perceptual bias and how people are notoriously narrow-minded and way too biased/focused/obssessed for their own good. The whale's eyes, on the other hand, see two different worlds simultaneously...

[amyelizabeth_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I did it! I finished Moby Dick, finally. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy.I'm sure most of you are familiar with the plot, so I'll spare you the details. Basically, Ishmael is a whaler on the Pequod, which is captained by Ahab. Ahab's leg was taken by Moby Dick, and now Ahab wants vengeance. However, before we can meet Moby Dick, Herman Melville has decided that we need an in-depth look at the whaling industry in order to fully understand what's going on. In part, I agree with him. Knowing what specific things are called does help a story move smoothly when there's a high-action scene. But I really didn't need so much detail. And I understand that Melville is making pointed jabs at Christianity and slavery and the whaling industry, and just about everything else under the sun. This is all well and good (and even funny), up to a point. But eventually it just gets old and you just want to see the main event (in which I was rather disappointed).While this is considered a classic and I know several people who think this is one of the greatest books on Earth, I just couldn't get into it. I get it; I understand its place in literary history and I can appreciate it for what it did, but I just didn't like it.2 out of 5 stars. I liked some of what Melville did (there was some mystery, but it was short-lived, and he made part of the prose into a play which is unique). But unless you have a burning desire to prove that you are able to power through 500 pages of allegory and whale bones, don't bother.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this when I was very young, and I don't really remember it very well. Another for the list of things to reread now I'm older and wiser!

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Meeslepend, maar de onderbrekingen storen toch. Die vertonen trouwens sterke gelijkenis met methode van Herodotus: kritische bevraging van verhalen. Het geheel is niet helemaal geloofwaardig, en vooral het slot is nogal abrupt.Stilistisch vallen de abrupte veranderingen in register en perspectief op, waarschijnlijk toch wel een nieuwigheid. De stijl zelf doet zeer bombastisch, rabelaissiaans aan. Tekening Ahab: mengeling van sympathie en veroordeling

[benbulben_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The master of allusion in storytelling. Every page has at least one allusion to a previous work of literature or story of the Bible (Jonah, Job, Solomon) or event experienced in Melville’s time. Don’t tell me how, but there was even one allusion to the current upheaval that Egypt is experiencing in replacing their dictator of thirty years. I think Starbucks mentioned something about it. The comparisons have comparisons. We get that your a smart guy that has read a lot of books, but tone it down a little. Let us enjoy the story without having to refer to some archaic reference. I’ve got my own 1001 books to read during my lifetime. I don’t need a thousand more.There needs to be a new genre of the novel created for Moby-Dick. We currently have the popular Historical Fiction or Historical Novel. What is the term for the combination of a study with a story. Fictionology? But that implies the study of fiction. This needs to combine Cetology with Historical Fiction. Moby-Dick was inspired by the reported sinking of the Essex in 1821 and by the great whale Mocha-Dick. Mocha Dick was a notorious male Sperm Whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century. In addition to that, we get the added benefit of enjoying every minute detail of whaling. If you were to take a whaling vessel from the 1840s and describe it inch by inch you would have what Herman Melville accomplished in Moby-Dick. I don’t think he missed a spot or explanation believed needed in describing what it was to whale. And you thought Charles Dickens was paid by the word. There is no brevity of detail in Herman Melville. Maybe it is a Victorian writer thing.Don’t get me wrong some if it was fascinating and Herman Melville led a remarkable life in his early years. His many experiences on whaling vessels and merchant ships combined with being stranded on an island with native peoples is fascinating. I hope to assuage some doubts I have in some of his background in Andrew Delbanco’s Melville: His World and Work. Some of it seems too good to be true. But I love how he described his classification system for the many varieties of whales in our great oceans. When it came down to it, all we really needed was a good description of the Right Whale and the Sperm Whale for those are the whales encountered by the crew of the Pequod–when you discount the few porpoises and giant squid. Did we really need the Folios, Octavos, and Duodecimos. I will leave that up to you. For me, I will need a good strong second reading, possibly a third and if time permits a fourth, to sort through the multi level sky rise building that is Moby-Dick. As someone once said, "blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree." Or was it, "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."I feel like I need to blow the water out of my ears.

[the_unnamable · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Any time I mentioned to someone that I was finally tackling the book of the whale, I would get eye-rolls or declarations of boredom. But I actually got sucked further and further in, as pulled by some leviathan's great wake.Ishmael's tale of Ahab's dark revenge is not a typical narrative. If one's looking for a well-paced action yarn, don't read it. It's a story of character asides and the sea and the secrets of the whale physical and metaphysical. Ishmael concerns himself chiefly with the unfolding sublime (in Burke's sense) rather than the mundane.Images and old-sea phrases will doubtless rattle around in my head for decades to come.

[thereadingmermaid · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a sea epic adventure story.If you didn't already know this book takes you on the journey of a sea voyage as told by our first person narrator Ishmael, who in boredom, decides to join the crew of a whaling ship called the Pequod. They then and bark on their journey off the coast of Nantucket and search of whales and most infamously the killer white well known to the sailors as Moby Dick. Crazy Captain Ahab seems not only dead set on evening the score with Moby Dick but in his obsession to do so leads the ship and its crew in to peril. Will Ishmael ever reach the shore again alive?Okay so I understand this is a classic, but my readers expect an honest review for me so here it goes...Though beautiful the writing is in this book, Herman Melville is extremely long-winded with his descriptions of pretty much everything. Every little detail takes an entire chapter to explain. The book becomes extremely tedious and even boring to those who aren't really keen on ocean epics. The language in which it is written is borderlined Old English and is beautiful to read. However as I said before the descriptions of things become monotonous with this author. I respect this for the classic that it is. But I'm sure this will probably be my one and only time reading this one. Now I can say that I have read it and move on. I would definitely recommend others to read it once and respect for the classic that it is as well. It is a good story overall, just difficult to read.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This review is for the Frank Muller narration - my review of Melville's book is given for the Kindle book. I found Muller's narration to be excellent and for certain sections of the book, I would probably have given up if I had been reading instead of listening!

[regoodrich · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Long Tale

Moby Dick is a classic tragedy delivered with excellent story-telling when it comes to the story itself. But the book is encumbered with many chapters of trivia about whales and whaling and other odds and ends pertaining to them; it put great lulls in the flow of the actual adventure. I read it all out of sheer perseverance, but I would recommend to any other interested reader an abridged version.

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this because it is a classic, even though I couldn't understand why someone would want to voluntarily sign on to the hard life of work on a whaling ship. I could understand what characters were doing, but seldom could see why they did what they did. The chapter on whales was skippable, since outdated. I did enjoy, afterward, reading reviews and analysis of this famous novel.

[birdo82 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's not much to say about this work from the American Renaissance that hasn't already been said, but Moby-Dick remains a surprisingly weird, funny, primal, and daunting novel for the modern reader.

[pferdina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the whole thing, but the story about Captain Ahab and the white whale probably takes up only the first ten or so chapters and the last three chapters. One could skip everything in the middle and still get the story. What makes this rambling, nonsensical book a classic, I surely don't know.

[subguy-181901 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic, heavy use of old English. As told through the eyes of a hired-on deck hand. A bit heavy on details but for any non-mariner/whaler it opens the world of 1800's whaling to them and puts them at sea with Captain Ahab and the crew! All in all, a classic masterpiece!

[benkaboo-51322 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The author writes in long sentances that drip with poetry. Personally I think they sound/feel a bit like shakespear. There appear to be more words than are needed, but at the same time they have a musical quality that forgives the excess.

Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale: Oh golly, I can't believe how this chapter drags as the author spends 9-10 pages making an argument for why the color/hue white should be menacing versus calming (assuming you thought it was calming in the first place).

Chapter 43-44: Really nice writing that continue to build the sense of menace and foreshadowing of the plot. As much as I was dragged through chapter 42, I really like the pacing of these chapters which refresh me and keep me in the story.

There is quite a bit of foreshadowing, lots of references to dark and dangerous things he will need to tell you in the future.

[mlhershey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Can't remember when I read this, but I did. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would

[ubiquitousuk-784690 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful prose and an intimate look at the life of a whaling ship and it's characters. But it was very difficult to not find the 500 page treatise on the whale fishery, which constituted the greatest part of the book, to be a bit tedious.

[neil_luvs_books · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an excellent book though a difficult slog. I do understand why Melville included many chapters on whaling and whales, but they did interrupt the flow of the story for me, as interesting as the whaling details were. I found the first third of the book thoroughly enjoyable. Really fun to read Ishmael’s activités and interactions before he boards the Pequod. And the last 4 or 5 chapters are riveting.

[caanderson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very long, long, tale about whaling. Entire chapter’s worth of telling you in deep description about the ports, ships, accommodations, equipment, and the whales. Also it talks about the horrors of whaling and how a whale is reduced to a commodity for human use. Captain Ahab got what he deserved!

[donhazelwood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes I can relate to Captain Ahab ...

[sheila1957 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Captain Ahab seeks revenge on Moby-Dick who bit off his one leg.This was not as bad as I expected it to be. I liked parts of it. I was bored with other parts. I also read the commentary that was included after the story was over. My edition is 670 pages. Moby-Dick is three books in one. The first book is the story of the Pequod, its crew, Captain Ahab, and the search for the Whale. I liked this part the best. I liked Ismael and Queequeg are quite a pair. Most of the humor come through them. The second book is the information on whaling. That was mostly interesting. The last part is the philosophy that Melville put in the book. Some of it was interesting (chapter 42--The Whiteness of the Whale) but most of it went over my head so was boring. The commentary at the back of the book was mostly boring. I did like modern day criticism of D. H. Lawrence (from 1964). It goes with chapter 42 and is extremely timely for now. I was glad I read it, but I doubt I will reread it.

[arthur_kenned-102747 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This work has a significant underlying hidden meaning that courses through the book from beginning to end. It is climactic and captivating.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a long book due to the author’s tendency towards a exposition of all things related to whales and whaling. The key story line is much shorter. Much of the terminology and analogies used are obscure and without explanation. This leaves the reader looking up vocabulary or moving on with confused understanding. I think I will need to watch the movie to make sense of some of the story. Regardless, the story is interesting and thought provoking. The author was much influenced by his religious studies. I do not strongly recommend this book.

[feralcatbob · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favorites. I first read this in high school and loved it even then. The book is really two books in one, the fictional* story, and a history/lore of whaling, masterfully interwoven together. The history/lore portion does slow the fictional story down a bit but for me adds a richness to the fictional portion. The fictional story, to me, is a story on the dangers of obsession, and friendship/loyalty and duty. For those that are fans of Star Trek, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" is a retelling of the story with Khan as Captain Ahab and Captain Kirk as The Whale. (See also"Star Trek:: First Contact" Picard as Ahab and the Borg as The Whale)

*The story is based on an actual incident between a whale and a whaling ship, the Essex. in a book by Nathaniel Philbrick - "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex" I did go back and reread Moby Dick after reading Philbrick's book.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An American classic that was even better than the first time I picked it up ten years ago. I appreciate the richness and depth of the story. And this time around, Ishmael's folios of whales was fascinating to read about.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In many ways a delightful book. I have always had the image of Melville, sitting quietly in a rented room, his floor and ceiling piled high with reference material thinking. "Why don't I write something about Whales? And why don't I put into it, everything I can find out about whales while I am writing it. The plot is not that important, but, how about a great obsession , a level of dedication like i get when I'm writing something myself? Or, ideally, I should have, when I'm writing something that I enjoy writing about? Yeah, why don't I do that?" And, so he did.

[peacocoa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I know I'm not saying anything new here, but here's my take. Just finished this book and my brain is on fire (in a good way) and my mind is blown. Beautiful novel. Sure it requires some patience. Sure you have to slog through a few chapters on cetology. But don't let that stop you. The chapters are short, and what nobody told me is that Melville ties in the human condition at the end of many of these chapters. Also, that's part of the beauty of the book. The obsession, the madness, the struggle of any human endeavor. Trying to find meaning in the meaningless.Trying to gain knowledge in an unknowable world. It's Shakespearean in its grandeur. It's poetic. Melville was a genius. You could come close to earning your PhD just from following and studying the allusions in the book. It would require multiple readings to take it all in. If you're a patient reader; if you're an intelligent reader - don't let the negative reviews or horror stories you've heard scare you off from reading as they did me. Don't put it off any longer.

[cuchulainn-798372 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a spectacular book! Absolutely phenomenal! I will definitely reread it in the future!
One of the things that captured my attention from the beginning is its humour. I didn't expect it to be so funny. Some of the chapters are just hilarious.
“Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.”

Furthermore, the language is very poetic, with beautiful imagery and philosophical ideas spread throughout the whole book:
“Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.”

I listened to the audiobook version, brilliantly narrated by William Hootkins. I can highly recommend it!