Moby Dick (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
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
Moby Dick: Or, The Whale is Melville's masterpiece, the book in which he most thoroughly used his experiences in the South Seas to examine the human condition and the metaphysical questions that were at the center of the author's troubled worldview. From the novel's famous opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” the reader is addressed directly by the book's youthful but embittered narrator. Unlike many of Melville's youthful narrators, Ishmael is not presented as a young innocent, although he does face an initiation into the ways of the world. Instead, he is depicted as a young...
[The entire page is 1130 words long]
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