Rewind, book: 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville
This revered American novel is part morality tale, part adventure story set on the turbulent Atlantic and taking place, for the most part, aboard the whaling ship Pequod. It follows the hunt for the titular leviathan by the doomed and mysterious Captain Ahab.
by Herman Melville
Harper & Brothers
This revered American novel is part morality tale, part adventure story set on the turbulent Atlantic and taking place, for the most part, aboard the whaling ship Pequod. It follows the hunt for the titular leviathan by the doomed and mysterious Captain Ahab.
The story is narrated by Ishmael, a good-natured if somewhat naïve soul who joins a whaling mission out of Nantucket for the excitement. He has no desire for riches and only desires to see "the watery world". This is in contrast to his shipmates and, in particular, to Ahab, whose vocation "amounts to a butchering sort of business".
While the crew are spurred on by money and adrenalin, Ahab is driven by a darker agenda: vengeance. The "grand, ungodly, God-like" captain will stop at nothing to destroy the sperm whale, who years past took his leg in a savage attack upon his vessel. In a strange twist, Ahab's prosthetic limb is made from a whale's jawbone.
