*New Bedford

*New Bedford. Massachusetts fishing community and seaport about sixty-five miles southeast of Boston, where the novel begins when its narrator, Ishmael, arrives to sign onto a whaling ship. He first stays at the Spouter Inn, where the only accommodation available is a room with one bed that he must share with the forbidding-looking harpooner Queequeg, a “heathen” from an uncharted South Seas island. During a storm, Ishmael seeks shelter in the Whaleman’s Chapel, where he is deeply moved by the sermon of the retired harpooner Father Mapple on the biblical story of Jonah and the whale.

*Nantucket

*Nantucket. Massachusetts island, about thirty miles south of Cape Cod, that was the center of the New England whaling industry in the early nineteenth century. There, Ishmael and Queequeg join the crew of the Pequod and begin their voyage.

Pequod

Pequod. Whaling ship commanded by Captain Ahab on which Ishmael and Queequeg sign. It is one of three well-equipped whaling vessels they find anchored at Nantucket, preparing to undertake three-year expeditions. When the Pequod begins its long voyage on Christmas Day, its mysterious captain remains in his cabin, a small, private world into which he retreats.

The repeated play of light and dark while the ship is at sea reflects the light and dark of the personalities aboard the whaler. Looming high above the ship’s decks, the tops of masts are important lookout stations from which Ishmael and other crew members watch for whales.

*Oceans

*Oceans. The first leg of the Pequod’s voyage takes the ship southeast from Nantucket, across the Atlantic Ocean to the west coast of Africa, which it follows across the equator to the Cape of Good Hope. The ship reaches the Cape of Good Hope, near the southern tip of Africa, before heading east into the Indian Ocean. In that ocean, the ship reaps a rich harvest of sperm whales but continues east into the Pacific Ocean, where it makes its way to the Japanese Sea. The ship eventually confronts Moby Dick in the Pacific, near the equator.

*Japanese Sea (Sea of Japan)

*Japanese Sea (Sea of Japan). Branch of the Pacific Ocean enclosed by Japan, Korea, and Siberia which, during the early nineteenth century, had large numbers of sperm whales. There, the obsessed Captain Ahab hopes to find the great white whale he calls Moby Dick, to which he once lost one of his legs. The captain’s monomaniacal quest to find Moby Dick alarms the ship’s mates, but other members of the crew take his quest as a challenge and encourage him.

Rachel

Rachel. Whaling ship that the Pequod encounters after it, the Rachel, has recently encountered Moby Dick, to which it has lost an entire boat crew, which includes the captain’s own son. Still obsessed with his personal quest to kill Moby Dick, Ahab declines the other captain’s appeal to help search for the lost boat—a decision that members of his own ship’s crew view as a bad omen.

Ahab’s boat

Ahab’s boat. Whaleboat on which Ahab pursues Moby Dick after the great white whale is finally sighted. His boat is one of three that chase the whale in a struggle that lasts for three days. On the third day, Ahab’s own harpoon inflicts a severe injury on the whale, and Ahab orders the other two boats back to the Pequod, so his own boat alone can make the kill. This boat becomes the crucible in which Captain Ahab plays out the final stages of his quest. Mad with pain, Moby Dick rams the Pequod with its huge head, shattering the ship’s bow. When Ahab launches another harpoon at the whale, its line wraps around his own neck, pulling him to his death. As the Pequod sinks, Moby Dick surfaces and dives, with Ahab’s lifeless body held tightly to its side by the harpoon lines.

America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
During the mid-nineteenth century, America was undergoing a tumultuous phase as it carved out its national and international identity, coinciding with the writing of Moby-Dick. Interestingly, this quintessential American novel is not primarily about westward expansion. Instead, it focuses on pursuit and capture, embodying the chase for a dream. The American Dream, originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is now viewed by some as a perilous obsession, a consuming national fixation. In many ways, Melville’s book speaks more to our contemporary era than to its own. One interpretation might see the Pequod as a symbol of modern corporate America, driven by a desire for control and domination, with Ahab representing a power-hungry executive, eager to exact revenge for any perceived slight.

Self-Reliance
At the time the novel was being written, Transcendentalism was emerging as the dominant philosophical and religious perspective. This viewpoint, most compellingly articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self-Reliance," asserted that God was present in the world and within every individual soul. Thus, the soul's intuitions were divine and should be followed, irrespective of authority, tradition, or public opinion. The core principle was “Trust thyself,” giving rise to the term “Self-Reliance.” This perspective, which never evolved into a strict system of thought, was essentially a reaction against New England Puritanism. Similar to English Romanticism, it was heavily influenced by German philosophers, particularly Immanuel Kant. As advocated by Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Jones Very, George Ripley, and numerous other New England poets, essayists, divines, and public speakers, Transcendentalism was idealistic, often avoiding fundamental religious concepts such as sin and evil.

Although Melville embodies the characteristics of the self-reliant individual described in Emerson’s essay—“to be great is to be misunderstood,” “who so would be a man must be a nonconformist”—he, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, was keenly aware that extreme self-reliance, as exemplified by the monomaniacal Ahab, could quickly transform virtue into vice. The Calvinist heritage could not be easily dismissed. (Calvinists adhered to John Calvin’s theological system, which included the doctrine of predestination and the belief that humanity was inherently depraved.) In his essay “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” Melville praised Hawthorne’s “power of blackness,” explaining that it “derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free.” This acknowledgment and awareness of sin is what distinguishes Melville from Transcendentalism, the prevailing movement of his time.

The American Whaling Industry
Since the seventeenth century, the United States has been engaged in whaling, with early settlers launching expeditions from Nantucket Island and various Massachusetts ports. Initially, these whalers hunted in relatively shallow coastal waters. However, in 1712, a storm unexpectedly pushed a whaling ship into deeper seas, leading to an encounter with a pod of sperm whales. One of these whales was captured, revealing the superior quality of sperm oil. This discovery prompted American whalers to undertake longer and more distant voyages in search of sperm whales. They traveled across the globe, often navigating uncharted waters, which in turn advanced maritime cartography. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was penned during the height of the American whaling industry, driven by domestic demand, when the United States possessed three-quarters of the world’s whaling fleet.

Historical Coincidence
The year Moby-Dick was published coincided with a real-life event where a whaling ship was sunk by a sperm whale, mirroring the novel's climax. The ship, Ann Alexander, had two of its whaleboats destroyed by the whale they were hunting. The whale then intentionally rammed the main vessel, causing it to sink.

Point of View
Melville’s earlier novels are primarily first-person narratives of romanticized sailing adventures presented as genuine experiences. In Moby-Dick, after the introductory sections of Etymology and Extracts, he begins with the famous line “Call me Ishmael,” signaling that the narrative voice in this novel will be more overtly fictional. In the initial chapters, Ishmael is an active character, narrating the story as an engaged first-person narrator. However, as the voyage progresses, particularly in the middle sections, Ishmael’s presence diminishes and the reader is often given an omniscient narrator’s perspective. This shift leads many readers to conflate the author, Melville, with the character of Ishmael. The narrative is interspersed with Shakespearean soliloquies and detailed discussions on whaling history and anatomy, which disrupt the flow of the story.

At no point does Ishmael narrate from a future perspective where he knows the voyage’s outcome. Since he would not be able to tell the story if he had perished with the ship, the reader understands this is a survivor’s tale. However, this does not imply that Ishmael’s initial attitudes and beliefs remain unchanged by the end of the novel; his experiences throughout the journey clearly impact him.

Symbolism
The sections that provide detailed information on whales and whaling, often awkwardly integrated into the narrative, emphasize that the story extends beyond a mere hunting expedition. It is not always clear who is presenting this information—Is it Ishmael? Melville?—but it is certainly not Ahab, who has lost interest in whaling as a practical and commercial endeavor. Nonetheless, some of this factual material offers insightful commentary on the themes of Ahab’s pursuit of a single whale, creating a layered symbolism within the book. The most basic and direct symbolism appears when groups of chapters draw clear analogies to allegorical qualities.

In Chapter 73, for instance, a whale's head is hoisted to the side of the ship, causing it to tilt until it is balanced by the head of another whale. The reader is informed that this is akin to being swayed by one philosopher and then attaining stability through the influence of another. The final advice given is to “Throw all these thunderheads overboard, and then you will float light and right.” However, a subsequent chapter shifts the analogy to a broader symbolic context. Chapter 76, titled “The Battering-Ram,” explains that a sperm whale's mouth is located entirely beneath its head, with its eyes and ears on the sides. This gives the whale's front a “dead, blind wall” appearance—a blank expanse of flesh and bone that Ahab confronts. The whale’s head thus represents the indifferent and unstoppable forces of nature.

Structure
After the episodic start of Moby-Dick, Melville experiments with the novel's structure. He incorporates very short chapters, some no longer than a page, and has characters speak as if they were on an Elizabethan stage rather than in a nineteenth-century novel. When compared to other nineteenth-century works by authors like Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope, Melville’s deviations can seem pronounced. However, Melville's contemporaries accepted the traditional novel structures of the time without issue. Reviews of Moby-Dick from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that its critical reception was actually positive. Notably, English reviewers appreciated the novel in the context of Melville's earlier works, considering it his best effort thus far.

Regrettably, the general public did not appreciate the novel’s nuances and innovations. During Melville’s lifetime, the book sold fewer than five thousand copies. Its structure likely played a role in this. For some readers, it remains challenging to finish on the first attempt. Conversely, once completed, it is relatively straightforward to revisit its pivotal moments and reassess their significance within the whole. This quality makes it a highly accessible text for study, with the brevity of its chapters aiding students in navigating the content.

Epic Style
Newton Arvin was among the first critics to pinpoint the features of what he termed Melville’s “verbal palette.” This includes Melville's penchant for verbal nouns like “regardings,” “allurings,” and “intercedings,” which lend the novel a grand, classical tone. One of the sources for Moby-Dick was Os Lusiados (The Lusiads) by sixteenth-century Portuguese poet Luis de Camoens. In this work, Camoens did for Portuguese what Geoffrey Chaucer did for English and Dante for Italian. Melville became increasingly aware that no one had yet accomplished this for American literature. While working on Moby-Dick, he read and reviewed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse. In his review, he remarked on the need for a heroic national literature that was truly independent.

Many of the epic allusions and grandiose elements in Moby-Dick are humorous, often mock-epic. The three-day battle with the whale at the book’s conclusion is on a monumental scale, and the connection to Prometheus (the Greek Titan who gave fire to humanity and was punished by Zeus) is deliberately “heroic.” However, Melville intersperses these with sections of ranting slang. As John McWilliams noted in his essay “The Epic in the Nineteenth Century,” “Moby-Dick represents a moment in literary history when generic terms retain old meanings that must be wilfully, even gleefully, broken down.”

• 1850s: Whaling operates with minimal regulation. American whalers freely navigate the oceans, hunting whales in any waters.

  Today: In 1986, member nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted to prohibit commercial whaling. However, countries like Norway and Japan continue to hunt whales.

• 1850s: Americans persist in their westward expansion. The northern states' population surpasses the southern states by one million. Slaveholding states aim to extend their influence into new territories such as California and Utah. A compromise in 1850 maintains peace for a decade, but slavery evolves into a significant and divisive issue between the North and South.

  Today: Differences between northern and southern states persist, though not at constitutional levels. Slavery has long been abolished, but many African Americans still face racism. Foreign policy issues dominate the political agenda as America strives to uphold and expand its international influence.

• 1850s: In defiance of Calvinistic sobriety, many middle-class individuals explore hydropathy, hypnotism, and phrenology, though these are considered alternatives to mainstream religious and medical practices.

  Today: Advocates of alternative medicines like reflexology and aromatherapy promote them as comprehensive belief systems and replacements for conventional religion.

• 1850s: Body painting or tattooing is associated with paganism. Queequeg’s tattoos lead Ishmael to believe “that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaler in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country.”

  Today: Tattoos and body piercings have gained widespread acceptance as fashion choices, alongside traditional jewelry.

• The first adaptation of Moby-Dick was a silent film titled The Sea Beast, released in 1926. John Barrymore starred as Ahab, and it was distributed by Warner Bros.
• In 1930, Warner Bros. produced a sound version of the novel, directed by Lloyd Bacon, with John Barrymore reprising his role as Ahab.
• The most famous adaptation is the 1956 color film directed by John Huston, featuring Gregory Peck as Ahab. While the film is a powerful and faithful rendition of the novel, opinions on the casting of Peck have been mixed. The cast also included Orson Welles, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, and Harry Andrews. The screenplay was written by John Huston and Ray Bradbury.
• In 1969, CBS News produced an educational film titled Moby Dick: The Great American Novel.
• An animated version called Moby Dick was produced by API Television Productions in 1977 and is available on video.
• George Kennedy's reading of the novel was released by "Listen for Pleasure Books on Cassette" in 1981.
• A radio dramatization was presented on NBC Theater and is available on a fifty-minute cassette in the Audio Library Classics series, distributed by Metacom in 1991.
• In 1992, Blackstone Audio Books produced a sound recording of the novel, read by Norman Dietz, on thirteen audiocassettes.
• A musical adaptation titled Moby Dick: A Whale of a Tale was staged in 1993 in London’s West End by Cameron Mackenzie. However, it was an unsuccessful adaptation and ran for only a few weeks.

Quotations from Moby-Dick are sourced from the following edition:
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, edited by Charles Child Walcutt, Bantam Classic edition. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.

Other Sources
Ashley, Clifford W. The Yankee Whaler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926. Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Moby-Dick. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.

Chase, Richard. “Melville and Moby-Dick.” In Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Richard Chase. Prentice-Hall, 1962.

“Criticism and Context.” In Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, edited by Charles Child Walcutt, Bantam Classic edition. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.

Kazin, Alfred. “Introduction to Moby-Dick.” In Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Richard Chase. Prentice-Hall, 1962.

Lee, A. Robert. “Moby-Dick as Anatomy.” In Herman Melville: Reassessments, edited by A. Robert Lee. Barnes & Noble, 1984.

McWilliams, John. “The Epic in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Columbia History of American Poetry. Columbia University Press, 1993.

McSweeney, Kerry. Moby-Dick: Ishmael’s Mighty Book. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Miller, Edwin Haviland. Melville. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1975.

Weaver, Raymond. Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic. Oxford University Press, 1921.

For Further Study
Allen, Gay Wilson. Melville and His World. Thames & Hudson, 1971. An introduction to Melville’s life and era.

Arvin, Newton. Herman Melville. Methuen, 1950. A psychological, Freudian analysis of Melville, emphasizing his relationship with his mother.

Barbour, James. “The Composition of Moby-Dick.” In On Melville: The Best from American Literature, edited by Louis J. Budd and Edwin Cady. Duke University Press, 1988, pp. 203-20. A contemporary critical perspective on Melville’s narrative technique.

Bloom, Harold. Introduction to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Chelsea House, 1986. An overview of the novel and an introduction to key critical essays.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ahab. Chelsea House, 1991. A compilation of essays and critical excerpts.

Brodtkorb, Paul, Jr. “Ishmael: The Nature and Forms of Deception.” In Herman Melville, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 1986, pp. 91-103. Brodtkorb examines the complexity of Ishmael’s narrative voice and perspective.

Camus, Albert. “Melville: Un Createur de mythes.” In Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts (1851-1970), edited by Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford. Norton, 1970. Melville has captivated French writers and critics, including Camus, more than any other American novelist of the nineteenth century.

Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. G. K. Hall, 1992. An updated collection of significant critical essays from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Fiedler, Leslie A. “Moby-Dick: The Baptism of Fire and the Baptism of Sperm.” In Love and Death in the American Novel. Meridian, 1962, pp. 520-52. Fiedler interprets the novel as a “love story” of “innocent homosexuality.”

Fieldsend, Andrew. “The Sweet Tongues of Cannibals: The Grotesque Pacific in Moby-Dick.” In Deep South, Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring, 1995. An article exploring Ishmael’s character development and the significance of the Pacific.

Freeman, John. Herman Melville. Macmillan, 1926. Freeman’s book aided in reviving Melville’s reputation during the 1920s.

Gale, Robert L. A Herman Melville Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, 1995. This comprehensive guide covers characters, plots, and biographical and historical information related to Melville and his works.

Gilmore, Michael T., ed. Moby-Dick: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice-Hall, 1977. A compilation of classic essays and excerpts from significant critics.

Hayford, Harrison, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. “Historical Note” to Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Vol. 6 of The Writings of Herman Melville. Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1988. This work provides a valuable overview of Melville’s life, the novel’s composition, and its critical reception over the years.

Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker, eds. Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge University Press, 1995. This book includes a reprint of the October 24, 1851, London Morning Advertiser article, which offers an extensive and favorable review of the three-volume English edition of Melville’s book.

Irwin, John T. “Melville: The Indeterminate Ground.” In American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. Yale University Press, 1980, pp. 285-349. Irwin explores the “inherently undecipherable character of the hieroglyph” as it appears in the novel.

Lewis, R. W. B. “Melville: The Apotheosis of Adam.” In The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 127-55. Lewis examines Melville’s role as a “myth-maker” in the context of American ideas of innocence.

McSweeney, Kerry. Moby-Dick: Ishmael’s Mighty Book. Twayne, 1986. McSweeney focuses on Ishmael to delve into Melville’s interests in psychology and metaphysics.

Miller, James Edwin. “Moby-Dick: The Grand Hooded Phantom.” In A Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville. Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, 1962, pp. 75-117. An introduction and analysis of the novel’s major themes.

Olson, Charles. Call Me Ishmael. City Lights, 1947. In this energetically poetic study, Olson interprets Moby-Dick as a “mythic odyssey.”

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography Vol. 1: 1819–1851. John Hopkins University Press, 1996. This detailed biographical study is the first volume of a planned two-volume set, providing exhaustive information on Melville’s early life up to the publication of Moby-Dick.

Parker, Hershel, and Harrison Hayford, eds. Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts (1851-1970). Norton, 1970. A broad collection of reviews and reactions to the novel from its publication through 1970.

Sealts, Merton, Jr. Pursuing Melville. Wisconsin University Press, 1982. This book contains illuminating correspondence between Sealts and Charles Olson, discussing Melville’s philosophy.

Sedgwick, William Ellery. Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind. Harvard University Press, 1945. Sedgwick identifies parallels between Melville’s and Shakespeare’s development.

Wright, Nathalia. Melville’s Use of the Bible. Duke University Press, 1949. Wright traces Melville’s fascination with truth and signification back to Biblical influences.