Melville's Moby-Dick

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1. jdw64Jul 2026
   I think of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick' as representing America.
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2. jdw64Jul 2026
   Homer's stories are essentially mythological. 'Huckleberry Finn,' on the other hand, feels more like satire than myth. But 'Moby-Dick' carries that mythic quality. Ahab is a whaling captain, but at the same time, he appears as a tragic king confronting a world he cannot understand or accept. And Moby Dick seems to symbolize both an animal and nature itself.

   Homer's epics feature human heroes who converse with divine beings. 'Moby-Dick' doesn't have that, but the overall atmosphere is mystical enough that I see it that way.

   The Pequod is both a commercial vessel and a representation of the American national system. The sea is described as a geographical space, yet also as a universe beyond human comprehension.

   There's no question that Mark Twain is a great author representing America. But if I had to choose one mythic work in American literature that corresponds to Homer, I would choose Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick'.

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3. mcarmichaelMar 2024
   Melville's Moby Dick. It can be about adventure, about whaling, about the fellowship of man, about mortality...

   Intruder in the Dust, the best of William Faulkner's "young adult" novels. The short story collection Knight's Gambit is also well worth a look.

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4. dbtcJun 2022
   Hamlet is what rerevealed Shakespeare to me. Now, speaking of forest and trees, what's even more mindblowing is to consider all those plays together, all the characters, (and the sonnets). What range! What scope!

   Who else? Melville's Moby Dick blew me away a bit like that too. And Joyce. And Goethe.

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5. scopJan 2022
   I can attest to the unique value of literature in assisting one’s ability to make sense of the world around them. I read entirely nonfiction throughout college and into my the first part of my career (philosophy, science, theology, computer stuff). I was then diagnosed with cancer in my late twenties, whereupon I plunged into fiction and found that it both aided my understanding/grasp of the world and quite literally gave me solace. Nonfiction tended to paint the world into a false sense of black/white, right/wrong, good choice/bad choice etc. Fiction on the other hand captured just how murky this life can be.

   (While on this topic, I will add that the single novel to have most shaken my soul is Melville’s Moby Dick. That novel brought me great comfort while also shattering me in many ways, what a work it is)

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6. koralatovJan 2013
   Even though I'm not a great fan of his work, Banks did write one of the most memorable opening lines ever in The Crow Road.

   Two other great examples:

   William Gibson's Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

   Herman Melville's Moby Dick: "Call me Ishmael."

   Neither strictly tells the reader what the books are about, but they're great hooks.

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