Moby Dick (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Herman Melville
- First Published: 1851
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Adventure, Sea story
- Subjects: Nature, Nineteenth century, Antiheroes, Ships, Sailing or sailors, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics, Sea or seafaring life, Romanticism, Tattoos, Whales or whaling
- Locales: Boston, MA, Oceans, Nantucket Island
The novel focuses on Captain Ahab’s complex quest to find and kill the huge white whale, Moby Dick, that has physically robbed him of his leg and metaphorically deprived him of his manhood, of his sense of individual importance and identity. Set in the mid-19th century during the heyday of American whaling, the story is told by Ishmael. His own quest for “the ungraspable phantom of life” parallels Ahab’s for the white whale. His style of storytelling, which includes action, meditative passages, exposition on whales and whaling, dramatic scenes modeled on Shakespeare, high...
[The entire page is 610 words long]
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