'Tis the good reader that makes the good book. / Emerson /

Moby Dick (Wordsworth Classics)

€5.90

Moby-Dick is a profound exploration of obsession, democracy, and storytelling. At its core is Captain Ahab’s relentless pursuit of the white whale that maimed him — a quest that spirals into fanaticism and self-destruction. Yet aboard the Pequod, the whaling ship, Melville also portrays a microcosm of democratic cooperation, where every crew member’s survival depends on mutual responsibility.

Narrated by Ishmael, an ordinary sailor with an extraordinary literary voice, the novel blends adventure with philosophical reflection. Ishmael’s digressive and richly allusive narrative educates readers in the gritty realities of whaling and the sublime possibilities of literature. Melville’s epic expands beyond its plot to embrace themes of nature, fate, and the human condition — earning its reputation as one of the greatest American novels ever written.

Author: Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Language: Angļu valoda
ISBN code: 9781853260087
Cover type: Soft cover
Year of publication:1992
Number of pages:544

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With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of ‘Poetry Review’.

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab’s quest to avenge the whale that ‘reaped’ his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.

But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab’s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education:

in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his ‘mighty theme’ – not only the whale but all things sublime – Melville breathes in the world’s great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.