what is the point of MOBY DICK

[polymorphikos]

What is the point of Moby Dick? Is it an exploration of humanity's attempts to control nature, a study of the irrational desire for vengeance, an expose on obsession, a warning about flipping the big one to God and going full-pelt into madness to put the Flying Dutchman to shame? Or is it all of these and more? The classic second-last chapter, the Third Day, sums it all up, but what are the reverberations of this event? And what the hell is up with Ishmael? Even more importantly, did even Melville know?

And what of genre? This book is transcendental, blending Faustian undertones, pure adventure, comedy, fantasy, horror, beautifully-delicate handling of drama and prose poetry that is permeated in every inch by the pungent perfume of deep brine.

Melville was years ahead of his time. He wrote in styles that mimicked Joyce before Joyce had written a word. He was terrible and beautiful and awful and sublime. He switched from the most intricate manipulations of linguistic ambiguity to grounded, accesible prose that a child could have grasped. He is never clear in what he shows but instead lets images flicker by like a dream, populating the endless sameness of the ocean with rising citadels of water and teeming masses of ferocious beasts. He delves into the relationship of the hunter and the hunted, into the biology of the hunted and the history of the hunter, he references things from every walk of life, whisks from one point to the other with speed and almost unthinking, constantly doubles-back and writhes and reels with his narrative.

To read this book is to be a sailor, perched atop the mizzen mast with the sea boiling slate-grey below. It is to plunge a harpoon, and to ask why, and to follow a man into the jaws of destruction and never question until terror and anxiety rear their heads and breach like a whale to show you the madness of it all. It is to incite waxing lyrical for no good reason.

And for all this, it is to leave you asking yourself at the end, what the hell was the point?

My pick for the greatest book ever written in English. Not an easy read, but a glorious one.

 

[Foxbat]

I love Moby Dick and agree that it is one of the best books ever written.

I think you've covered most of the bases of what it's about. For me, it's about a man damaged by his own doggedness, and determined to wreak revenge on what he sees as his nemesis. It's about the darkness within his own heart and how it ultimately destroys not only him but all of those around him.

The crucial part of this book is the lack of evidence of any malevolence in Moby Dick. He s a creature going about his daily existence whilst Ahab is merely a raging speck - a furious flea on the back of this Leviathan. This, to me, signifies the futility of Ahab's madness.

The book is a warning to all of us that if we allow ourselves to be eaten away by bitterness and thoughts of revenge then, eventually, these things will destroy us. and in that sense, it certainly has Faustian undertones.

But most of all, it's a great adventure in a time long since departed, it's as much an account of Whaling in the 19th century as anything else. A book I enjoy over and over again

 

[polymorphikos]

I brought it up since I decided to re-read because I couldn't get into anything else. I especially like the way Melville alludes to things, like the conversation in the longboat about whether or not Mustafa is a demon, and the mysterious scar down Ahab's side. You're right about the futility thing. Humanity is constantly trying to alter the unalterable and read into things without meaning, and unless you get an answer such a thing will eventually consume you. My father and sister could definitely stand to read it, although neither is the type to do so. The best bit is that it is deep, but not dry. So many authors think (or thought) that something of meaning has(d) to be glacial and austere and without any excitement, and it is great to see that most of the best (or most acclaimed) things written go entirely against this and are full of excitement and adventure or action or such (Odyssey, Illiad, most of Shakespeare, so on and so forth). Anna Karenina be damned, and The Alien Sky was better than Staying On.