Moby-Dick, or, the Whale

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 700+ words | Copyright

Moby-Dick, or, the Whale (1851), a novel by H. Melville.

Captain Ahab seeks revenge on the white whale that has bitten off his leg. ‘Call me Ishmael’, is the striking opening phrase of a story that takes the young narrator to sea on the doomed whaler Pequod. Both Ahab and Ishmael seek knowledge, but while Ishmael learns love and humanity ‘monomaniacal Ahab’ pursues a demonic God behind the ‘hooded phantom’ or ‘unreasoning mask’ of the symbolic whale. Melville interrupts the narrative with facts, tales, and soliloquies, including Father Mapple's sermon on the Leviathan, the Town-Ho's story, a dissertation on whales (‘Cetology’), and a metaphysical dissertation on the ambiguous ‘whiteness of the whale’. After a fierce three-day chase Moby-Dick destroys the Pequod. Ishmael survives the vortex: ‘And only I am escaped alone to tell thee’, begins his epilogue, citing the Book of Job.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Moby-Dick, or, the Whale." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Moby-Dick, or, the Whale." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-MobyDickortheWhale.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Moby-Dick, or, the Whale." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-MobyDickortheWhale.html

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