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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
I understand that this book is a classic and the language is challenging, however, this felt like reading. An encyclopaedia. The narrative parts of the story were enjoyable at times but the majority of this book was a slog that felt more like homework.
I read this book for the bragging rights, but I ended up really loving it and a month later I can’t stop thinking about it.
It has a bad reputation for being a slog, but honestly it was funny, though it requires a lot of context in order to get the jokes. If i had read it in high school most of it would have escaped me, and I’m sure there are still tons of things I missed out on because I’m not living in New England in 1851. But for instance, the quakers who preach pacifism and yet send out these whaling vessels to commit acts of violence that are retold in excruciating detail? Melville plays up the irony very well.
What struck me though was how the first chapters were sort of light hearted and farcical, but through the course of the novel the situation begins to deteriorate into chaos.
I fully understand why people hate this book, but if you can get over the 19th century prose, and if you don’t mind that half of the book is just cool-whale-facts-with-Ishmael, this makes for an excellent read.
It has a bad reputation for being a slog, but honestly it was funny, though it requires a lot of context in order to get the jokes. If i had read it in high school most of it would have escaped me, and I’m sure there are still tons of things I missed out on because I’m not living in New England in 1851. But for instance, the quakers who preach pacifism and yet send out these whaling vessels to commit acts of violence that are retold in excruciating detail? Melville plays up the irony very well.
What struck me though was how the first chapters were sort of light hearted and farcical, but through the course of the novel the situation begins to deteriorate into chaos.
I fully understand why people hate this book, but if you can get over the 19th century prose, and if you don’t mind that half of the book is just cool-whale-facts-with-Ishmael, this makes for an excellent read.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.”- Captain Ahab
how to review moby dick? it's an adventure. it's a love story. it's a tragedy. it's a horror. it's an encyclopedia. it's a how-to guide. it's a scathing critique of tradition. it's getting sat down by your best buddy ishmael as he goes on and on and on about whales and you can't even correct him as he goes no no my dear chap listen here. they're FISH. it's rolling your eyes as ishmael earnestly defends the whaling industry and asserts scientific credentials to which he has zero claim. it's grimacing a bit as ishmael unlearns his 19th-century racism and replaces it with 19th-centurty anti-racism, nearly as heinous to the modern reader's ear but a worthwhile effort. it's paragraphs upon paragraphs of nigh-incomprehensible symbolism. it's the might and majesty of the natural world. I loved this book so much. it broke my heart
I found the long descriptions mind-spinningly lush and delicious. I came to this soon after finishing anna karenina, so it's not like I was unused to long-winded descriptions, but moby dick's dense symbolism and frequent use of jargon rendered much of the audiobook incomprehensible without a text companion, and even then there were passages I simply didn't feel like sitting down and combing through for meaning. no wonder it’s a classic of english literature, even tho the subject matter is so…non-universal. I'll do a close read next time! ishmael's long descriptions of whale taxonomy and phrenology were similarly delightfully abstruse. ishmael baby what are you TALKING about! he's so silly. I love the ocean and whales and imagery of the deep and sailing and old ships so I was having a great time just swept up in ishmael's flow. but if there’s one thing about ishmael he will not pass up the opportunity to make a metaphor of a situation. he's like a shark smelling blood
and one of the reasons this book is so special and beloved to me is because it re-ignited a love of the natural world and of sea creatures and of birds and fish and whales and being out on the open ocean and smelling the salty air and feeling the wood of the ship and the roughness of the ropes....my first degree was in biology, and I was able to volunteer on a tall ship, years ago, and I treasure those memories deeply. moby dick had me going oh my god they’re talking about giant squid vs. sperm whale one of the most unequivocally most incredible things to exist on this earth with us! and going THE ECOSYSTEM ON THE HEADS OF RIGHT WHALES....and googling whales and going 'isn’t it so strange and incredible that we share a world with something like the narwal….I love the earth and all its living beings so much…' thank you herman melville thank you moby dick <3 also stop shooting at them they're not 'infesting the seas' they LIVE there. 19th-century western imperial mindset frrr
yes, to start at the beginning, I found ishmael extremely funny and not just likeable, but lovable. his energy and the style was absolutely magnetic. he's the kind of strange and dramatic personality, brimming with sardonic wit and subtle allusions to homicide, that make it hard to believe how well he can fade into the background of the story, to disappear as he does later in the novel.
he meets queequeg - I love queequeg! their relationship, especially in these early chapters, is brimming with the sort of homoeroticism I have rarely seen in a classic before. which just makes the end of the story that much more tragic. I really thought they'd spend their entire lives together, you know? they clearly cared about each other so much, and queequeg was so far from his home and all alone, and ishmael would always call him 'my queequeg'....oh man. really overcome by all the forehead touches. it was so tender.
notes from my lb: 'can’t believe herman melville is cracking out the ‘only one bed’ trope this early in the game. the two of them coming downstairs next morning to a grinning landlord is killing me. melville had no idea what the girlies would be writing in 150 years with these exact plot beats'
you can't discuss qq without talking about the racism - it really is hard to overemphasize how much HM is invoking the noble savage trope and going all-in on phrenology but also genuinely attempting to go for positive depiction of an indigenous Polynesian man. like Ishmael will call queequeg a savage and talk about the barbarism of his homeland and describe him and all of his people as cannibals but also compared his skull shape to george washington’s which was a HUGE compliment and depict him consistently as courageous, skilled, honest, and kind. queequeg rejected christianity because christians really weren’t acting any better than he had been led to expect, and Ishamel even joins him in his evening worship as a gesture of goodwill and reflects that religion isn’t everything, as ideals of christian goodness can often result in ‘hollow’ kindness. despite the extremely racist lines and perspectives evident in the work, the treatment of race was quite impressive by the end, for a book published in 1851
also the black comedy in this book was killer; the landlady putting up 'no suicide on premises' was so fucking funny. when ishmael gets back from the terrible whaling attempt where it was storming and the boat almost capsized and they had to wait all night sitting in a foot of water to be picked up and is like ‘is this normal, fellas’ and everyone is like 'yep!’ and he’s like 'okay!’ and goes to write up his will. and this is the industry he says he loves and owes everything to
man ahab is rly out there...the first mate was like ‘what are you talking about, that’s literally an animal! he’s not evil! and I’m here to do a job and make money, not help you in a revenge plot against an animal!’ and ahab was like 'listen starbuck. I know you’ve invested a lot of money and three years of your life into this voyage but dw about that. that whale is sentient and evil he hates me specifically I saw it in his eyes. we need to kill him starbuck’ like…rip. anyway I'm joining the war against moby dick on the side of moby dick. 'oh moby dick is so malignant’ YOU ARE TRYING TO KILL HIM…like I get you’re all trying to make a living but you can’t attempt to kill an animal and then act like it’s evil for attacking back! also the hubris of man and all that etc. etc.
insane to consider these guys went on voyages together for trips of three years or more and carried everything they needed with them the entire time on their ship…enough food for a 30-ish people for THREE years!! how did they not get sick of salted meat? how did the butter not spoil? no wonder they all got scurvy! ishmael never mentioned it tho, maybe it's not as common as we're led to believe
it’s absolutely delightful that they’re all actually saying ‘AVAST’ and 'me hearties’ and 'Thar she blows!!!!’ like damn it’s not just a popular misconception of a sailor? people really said that? just enthralling. embarrassing perhaps but I never connected 'thar she blows' w whales or whaling I just thought it was a sailing catchphrase they'd just say lmao
he. he just comes out and says that the whale is a symbol. 30% in he’s like ‘ahab considers moby dick an encapsulation of everything bad that had ever happened to him and all the evil in the world and he’s off his rocker trying to kill it’ HE JUST TELLS YOU
'however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him' - LITERALLY still true. I love the use of the word 'murder'. the sea is sentient and hates you and wants to kill you
its so funny how they try to make us feel bad for that one mate dying from moby dick eating him as if he hadn’t told his crew to drop him off on moby dick like a dock and then tried to stab him to death in order to butcher him and harvest the oil in his head. like if someone did that to me and I weighed one hundred thousand pounds I would also bite him in half
I was slightly let down that melville didn’t offer any commentary at all on the slave ships. I guess I’d hoped for more. but he's more concerned with proving how great whalers are. this man really had a chip on his shoulder. shame he couldn't spare a single line to condemn chattel slavery
the perceptions of whiteness and non-whiteness are relatively complex bc on the surface and certainly to a modern reader there IS so much racism and orientalism and discussion of 'exotic' lands and talk of savages and cannibals and casual white supremacy at certain points ishmael flat-out states things like 'this white rope is more beautiful than and superior to this dusky rope' but on some level I think melville is also commenting on ishmael's own perceptions bc ishmael DOES grow and change throughout the book and come to accept and admire queequeg, the harpooners are consistently depicted as courageous and loyal and skilled to the very end, and ishmael does talk about how horrifying and deathly the color white symbolizes, and the book explores the cruelty of the white officers' treatment towards their black employees like the cook. the difficulty for me was in determining what was meant to be a commentary on racism from melville himself and what was simply racist bc melville was a white 19th-century american. but he made an effort!
what WAS clear was the the racist assumptions of the crew about characters like queequeg, daggoo, tashtego, and fedallah, were incorrect. the true devil on board this ship was ahab, and he was using their labor and their loyalty for his own nefarious and monomaniacal ends. mainly fedallah - the harpoonists didn't seem as bent on revenge as fedallah did and also the mates never assumed they were literal devils. god, poor fedallah. what WAS going on with that guy, anyway?
really loved the cetology sections. as a person who loves taxonomy I was howling. he was like okay now let’s get to the science of whales. now we do not know much. here’s a very long list of people who wrote about whales. only about three of them ever saw one in person. *colorful, loving descriptions of whale that uses the term ‘leviathans’ at least twice*, some whales are bigger than others and sperm whales are the biggest and therefore the best. we don’t have any classification system for them but I can make one dw. now I know I’m not a naturalist but I’ve seen a bunch of whales so I think I can do this. I asked my buddies and they agreed linnaeus was wrong and a whale IS a fish. my backup: the bible. and that’s the science of whales <3
wishing I could transcend reality to interact with a fictional character but it’s to tell ishmael that he doesn’t actually have any scientific credentials and that he has no idea how complex and incredible the biology of a flea or an ant is. his interest in natural science is SO interesting reading it in 2024 tho. 'But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may it not be, that since Adam’s time they have degenerated?' evolution isn't just 'it's better to get bigger' sweetheart!!!
'A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body.' - shrink wrap problem real. I do want to emphasize that ishmael is incredibly observant, curious. and intelligent - for the most part he’s doing very well with the resources he has at his disposal. he occasionally makes baseless claims about his credentials or unilaterally decrees something with zero foundation, but his thoroughness, attention to detail, capability of making connections, intuitive grasp of anatomy and physiology, genuine passion, and clarity in communication are really astonishingly impressive. freed from the commitment to ‘intelligent design’ and a belief in the ark and given a more formal structure for understanding whale biology, habits, evolution, taxonomy, etc. I think he’d really thrive
at times ishmael seems to WANT to believe in science and then he has to course correct to attribute it to god instead. like when he said ‘whales are guided by instinct. I mean divine intelligence granted by The Diety’ - when he was like 'the bones of whale fins are much like the bones of human hand’ I wanted to be like. that’s evolution, babe!
it would def be good for ishmael to figure out he’s gay and in love w his friend and co-worker but I think it’s evolution that really would have saved him. like he would be happier if he wasn't so repressed but he's experiencing genuine distress about this whale thing and I think he needs to be introduced to cetology as a science as NOT as a symbolic and religious and and visual spectacle
also when ishmael IS right about whale biology or physics of life, as when he talked about whale's veins lacking valves or their oxygenation needs, it was really cool. this book has united my adoration for inexhaustibly learning specific facts about an animal with a historical fictional narrative with gorgeous writing. what other book can give me this. apparently a lot of people skip the anatomy chapters? lit majors rly need to get over themselves and read 8 chapters straight of inaccurate biological information. someone on reddit said it's meant to emphasize how the whale is just an animal despite the significance ahab puts on him and I'll take that! but even if it meant nothing. it's part of the STORYYYY. and I liked it <3
the scene where they came upon a huge pod and found pregnant and nursing mothers…mating couples…calves and babies....
how to review moby dick? it's an adventure. it's a love story. it's a tragedy. it's a horror. it's an encyclopedia. it's a how-to guide. it's a scathing critique of tradition. it's getting sat down by your best buddy ishmael as he goes on and on and on about whales and you can't even correct him as he goes no no my dear chap listen here. they're FISH. it's rolling your eyes as ishmael earnestly defends the whaling industry and asserts scientific credentials to which he has zero claim. it's grimacing a bit as ishmael unlearns his 19th-century racism and replaces it with 19th-centurty anti-racism, nearly as heinous to the modern reader's ear but a worthwhile effort. it's paragraphs upon paragraphs of nigh-incomprehensible symbolism. it's the might and majesty of the natural world. I loved this book so much. it broke my heart
I found the long descriptions mind-spinningly lush and delicious. I came to this soon after finishing anna karenina, so it's not like I was unused to long-winded descriptions, but moby dick's dense symbolism and frequent use of jargon rendered much of the audiobook incomprehensible without a text companion, and even then there were passages I simply didn't feel like sitting down and combing through for meaning. no wonder it’s a classic of english literature, even tho the subject matter is so…non-universal. I'll do a close read next time! ishmael's long descriptions of whale taxonomy and phrenology were similarly delightfully abstruse. ishmael baby what are you TALKING about! he's so silly. I love the ocean and whales and imagery of the deep and sailing and old ships so I was having a great time just swept up in ishmael's flow. but if there’s one thing about ishmael he will not pass up the opportunity to make a metaphor of a situation. he's like a shark smelling blood
and one of the reasons this book is so special and beloved to me is because it re-ignited a love of the natural world and of sea creatures and of birds and fish and whales and being out on the open ocean and smelling the salty air and feeling the wood of the ship and the roughness of the ropes....my first degree was in biology, and I was able to volunteer on a tall ship, years ago, and I treasure those memories deeply. moby dick had me going oh my god they’re talking about giant squid vs. sperm whale one of the most unequivocally most incredible things to exist on this earth with us! and going THE ECOSYSTEM ON THE HEADS OF RIGHT WHALES....and googling whales and going 'isn’t it so strange and incredible that we share a world with something like the narwal….I love the earth and all its living beings so much…' thank you herman melville thank you moby dick <3 also stop shooting at them they're not 'infesting the seas' they LIVE there. 19th-century western imperial mindset frrr
yes, to start at the beginning, I found ishmael extremely funny and not just likeable, but lovable. his energy and the style was absolutely magnetic. he's the kind of strange and dramatic personality, brimming with sardonic wit and subtle allusions to homicide, that make it hard to believe how well he can fade into the background of the story, to disappear as he does later in the novel.
he meets queequeg - I love queequeg! their relationship, especially in these early chapters, is brimming with the sort of homoeroticism I have rarely seen in a classic before. which just makes the end of the story that much more tragic. I really thought they'd spend their entire lives together, you know? they clearly cared about each other so much, and queequeg was so far from his home and all alone, and ishmael would always call him 'my queequeg'....oh man. really overcome by all the forehead touches. it was so tender.
notes from my lb: 'can’t believe herman melville is cracking out the ‘only one bed’ trope this early in the game. the two of them coming downstairs next morning to a grinning landlord is killing me. melville had no idea what the girlies would be writing in 150 years with these exact plot beats'
you can't discuss qq without talking about the racism - it really is hard to overemphasize how much HM is invoking the noble savage trope and going all-in on phrenology but also genuinely attempting to go for positive depiction of an indigenous Polynesian man. like Ishmael will call queequeg a savage and talk about the barbarism of his homeland and describe him and all of his people as cannibals but also compared his skull shape to george washington’s which was a HUGE compliment and depict him consistently as courageous, skilled, honest, and kind. queequeg rejected christianity because christians really weren’t acting any better than he had been led to expect, and Ishamel even joins him in his evening worship as a gesture of goodwill and reflects that religion isn’t everything, as ideals of christian goodness can often result in ‘hollow’ kindness. despite the extremely racist lines and perspectives evident in the work, the treatment of race was quite impressive by the end, for a book published in 1851
also the black comedy in this book was killer; the landlady putting up 'no suicide on premises' was so fucking funny. when ishmael gets back from the terrible whaling attempt where it was storming and the boat almost capsized and they had to wait all night sitting in a foot of water to be picked up and is like ‘is this normal, fellas’ and everyone is like 'yep!’ and he’s like 'okay!’ and goes to write up his will. and this is the industry he says he loves and owes everything to
man ahab is rly out there...the first mate was like ‘what are you talking about, that’s literally an animal! he’s not evil! and I’m here to do a job and make money, not help you in a revenge plot against an animal!’ and ahab was like 'listen starbuck. I know you’ve invested a lot of money and three years of your life into this voyage but dw about that. that whale is sentient and evil he hates me specifically I saw it in his eyes. we need to kill him starbuck’ like…rip. anyway I'm joining the war against moby dick on the side of moby dick. 'oh moby dick is so malignant’ YOU ARE TRYING TO KILL HIM…like I get you’re all trying to make a living but you can’t attempt to kill an animal and then act like it’s evil for attacking back! also the hubris of man and all that etc. etc.
insane to consider these guys went on voyages together for trips of three years or more and carried everything they needed with them the entire time on their ship…enough food for a 30-ish people for THREE years!! how did they not get sick of salted meat? how did the butter not spoil? no wonder they all got scurvy! ishmael never mentioned it tho, maybe it's not as common as we're led to believe
it’s absolutely delightful that they’re all actually saying ‘AVAST’ and 'me hearties’ and 'Thar she blows!!!!’ like damn it’s not just a popular misconception of a sailor? people really said that? just enthralling. embarrassing perhaps but I never connected 'thar she blows' w whales or whaling I just thought it was a sailing catchphrase they'd just say lmao
he. he just comes out and says that the whale is a symbol. 30% in he’s like ‘ahab considers moby dick an encapsulation of everything bad that had ever happened to him and all the evil in the world and he’s off his rocker trying to kill it’ HE JUST TELLS YOU
'however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him' - LITERALLY still true. I love the use of the word 'murder'. the sea is sentient and hates you and wants to kill you
its so funny how they try to make us feel bad for that one mate dying from moby dick eating him as if he hadn’t told his crew to drop him off on moby dick like a dock and then tried to stab him to death in order to butcher him and harvest the oil in his head. like if someone did that to me and I weighed one hundred thousand pounds I would also bite him in half
I was slightly let down that melville didn’t offer any commentary at all on the slave ships. I guess I’d hoped for more. but he's more concerned with proving how great whalers are. this man really had a chip on his shoulder. shame he couldn't spare a single line to condemn chattel slavery
the perceptions of whiteness and non-whiteness are relatively complex bc on the surface and certainly to a modern reader there IS so much racism and orientalism and discussion of 'exotic' lands and talk of savages and cannibals and casual white supremacy at certain points ishmael flat-out states things like 'this white rope is more beautiful than and superior to this dusky rope' but on some level I think melville is also commenting on ishmael's own perceptions bc ishmael DOES grow and change throughout the book and come to accept and admire queequeg, the harpooners are consistently depicted as courageous and loyal and skilled to the very end, and ishmael does talk about how horrifying and deathly the color white symbolizes, and the book explores the cruelty of the white officers' treatment towards their black employees like the cook. the difficulty for me was in determining what was meant to be a commentary on racism from melville himself and what was simply racist bc melville was a white 19th-century american. but he made an effort!
what WAS clear was the the racist assumptions of the crew about characters like queequeg, daggoo, tashtego, and fedallah, were incorrect. the true devil on board this ship was ahab, and he was using their labor and their loyalty for his own nefarious and monomaniacal ends. mainly fedallah - the harpoonists didn't seem as bent on revenge as fedallah did and also the mates never assumed they were literal devils. god, poor fedallah. what WAS going on with that guy, anyway?
really loved the cetology sections. as a person who loves taxonomy I was howling. he was like okay now let’s get to the science of whales. now we do not know much. here’s a very long list of people who wrote about whales. only about three of them ever saw one in person. *colorful, loving descriptions of whale that uses the term ‘leviathans’ at least twice*, some whales are bigger than others and sperm whales are the biggest and therefore the best. we don’t have any classification system for them but I can make one dw. now I know I’m not a naturalist but I’ve seen a bunch of whales so I think I can do this. I asked my buddies and they agreed linnaeus was wrong and a whale IS a fish. my backup: the bible. and that’s the science of whales <3
wishing I could transcend reality to interact with a fictional character but it’s to tell ishmael that he doesn’t actually have any scientific credentials and that he has no idea how complex and incredible the biology of a flea or an ant is. his interest in natural science is SO interesting reading it in 2024 tho. 'But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may it not be, that since Adam’s time they have degenerated?' evolution isn't just 'it's better to get bigger' sweetheart!!!
'A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body.' - shrink wrap problem real. I do want to emphasize that ishmael is incredibly observant, curious. and intelligent - for the most part he’s doing very well with the resources he has at his disposal. he occasionally makes baseless claims about his credentials or unilaterally decrees something with zero foundation, but his thoroughness, attention to detail, capability of making connections, intuitive grasp of anatomy and physiology, genuine passion, and clarity in communication are really astonishingly impressive. freed from the commitment to ‘intelligent design’ and a belief in the ark and given a more formal structure for understanding whale biology, habits, evolution, taxonomy, etc. I think he’d really thrive
at times ishmael seems to WANT to believe in science and then he has to course correct to attribute it to god instead. like when he said ‘whales are guided by instinct. I mean divine intelligence granted by The Diety’ - when he was like 'the bones of whale fins are much like the bones of human hand’ I wanted to be like. that’s evolution, babe!
it would def be good for ishmael to figure out he’s gay and in love w his friend and co-worker but I think it’s evolution that really would have saved him. like he would be happier if he wasn't so repressed but he's experiencing genuine distress about this whale thing and I think he needs to be introduced to cetology as a science as NOT as a symbolic and religious and and visual spectacle
also when ishmael IS right about whale biology or physics of life, as when he talked about whale's veins lacking valves or their oxygenation needs, it was really cool. this book has united my adoration for inexhaustibly learning specific facts about an animal with a historical fictional narrative with gorgeous writing. what other book can give me this. apparently a lot of people skip the anatomy chapters? lit majors rly need to get over themselves and read 8 chapters straight of inaccurate biological information. someone on reddit said it's meant to emphasize how the whale is just an animal despite the significance ahab puts on him and I'll take that! but even if it meant nothing. it's part of the STORYYYY. and I liked it <3
the scene where they came upon a huge pod and found pregnant and nursing mothers…mating couples…calves and babies....
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
“Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
From ch. 70, “The Sphynx”
From ch. 70, “The Sphynx”
A waste of 600 pages explaining the harvesting and use of whale blubber. Once it gets to the point, it’s good but please
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
forgot to add this last year when i finished rereading anyways still 5 stars literally catapulted my obsession with whales the book of all times and then god created the great whales yeah yeah everyone should read it at least once in their life