Moby-Dick is a whaling adventure that ranks as one of the greatest novels in American literature. Herman Melville wrote the book, which was published in London in October 1851, and in the United States in November 1851. Its full title is Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Melville wrote many books, some of them seafaring stories, but his reputation rests on this novel.
Moby-Dick is the story of the hunt for Moby Dick, a fierce white whale supposedly known to sailors of Melville’s time. Captain Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship Pequod. He lost a leg in an earlier battle with Moby Dick and is determined to pursue and destroy the white whale that has so tormented him. The story is narrated by the sailor Ishmael, the only survivor of the Pequod’s confrontation with Moby Dick at the end of the story. The novel brilliantly describes the dangerous and often violent life on a whaling ship, and contains information on the whaling industry and the nature of whales. Melville’s depiction of the Pequod’s crew—a collection of American and international types and characters—is a particularly appealing part of the story.
Melville had been a sailor on an 18-month whaling voyage to the Pacific Ocean in 1841 and 1842. His experiences on the voyage formed the basis for Moby-Dick. Melville had almost finished the book when he met American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne inspired him to radically revise the whaling documentary into a novel of both universal significance and literary complexity.
The Moby-Dick that evolved from Melville’s revisions is a deeply symbolic narrative, though the meaning of its symbols—especially the white whale—is not readily apparent. Some critics believe that the whale symbolizes the mysterious and complex forces of the universe, but whether those forces are evil or indifferent is a matter of individual assessment. For the ship’s crew, the whale may be just another creature of the sea. For Ahab, Moby Dick is an emblem of evil.
Melville’s adventure books before Moby-Dick made him a popular American writer, but that reputation began to decline with the publication of his masterpiece. Many readers did not know what to make of the book’s variety of subjects, from whaling to epic adventure to revenge tragedy. From chapter to chapter, Melville ranged from inflated heroic language to the most informal of styles. The book’s radical shifts in tone and subject matter puzzled its early readers and sales were poor. Only in the early 1900’s did critics and readers first fully appreciate the book’s continually changing nature, at which time Moby-Dick re-emerged to take its place as one of the most masterful American novels ever written.
