Moby Dick

(1851)

This is an amazing book with many symbolic meanings. As you read this book you will come to realize that Ahab has several problems as well as ambitions in his life. Moby Dick is an outstanding book that I highly enjoyed and I hope that you enjoy it as well.--Submitted by Anonymous.

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Another Moby Dick Movie

my friend JLT sent me the following info in an email entitled "another sign the apocalypse is nigh." Variety reports that Universal Pictures has decided to produce a big budget reimagiging of Herman Melville's classic literary tale Moby Dick with Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) to work from a screenplay being written by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage for "a high six figures." The Variety story details some of the changes that are being planned for the new version of Melville's tale: The writers revere Melville's original text, but their graphic novel-style version will change the structure. Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael, who observes how Ahab's obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain. This change will allow them to depict the whale's decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab's Pequod, and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive. "Our vision isn't your grandfather's 'Moby Dick,' " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story." any thoughts?

Posted By fatmore at Wed 24 Sep 2008, 2:27 PM in Moby Dick || 2 Replies

Is This Truly One of the Great Works in English?

Do people unanimously agree on that, nowadays? I'm sixty years old. I "read" Moby Dick in high school, but as it was too abstruse for me to REALLY read it (and I've spent a lifetime as a literature major, writer, and reader), I thought I would try it again. I just finished listening to a set of 18 CDs. Took me over a month. I told my wife, "If I were an editor and someone sent Moby Dick to me as a manuscript, I'd say, "Cut out the 600 pages of didactic information about whaling, and you've got a 'whale' of a 200-page story there!" Does anyone agree? Even if I'm humiliating myself in front of every Western Literature aficionado, I want to say this. I did not feel that way when I re-experienced, after many years, The Great Gatsby or Cry, the Beloved Country or Tender Is the Night, to give three examples. Besides the encyclopedic essayism about whaling, I found Melville's way of using metaphors to be sometimes overblown and a little irritating--his penchant for saying "the were 'Japans' of so-and-so". I don't know if I can articulate this clearly. There were some very moving passges in the last several hundred pages, the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab, Pip and Ahab, all the elaborate foreshadowing, etc...although even here it sometimes seemed a little consciously "Shakespearian" to me. That's my considered opinion, spoken just after finishing the book and before I've had time, or read enough essays, to alter my genuine response. Please tell me what you think about what I've said. Sincerely, Max

Posted By REALnothings@co at Wed 30 Jul 2008, 3:03 PM in Moby Dick || 11 Replies

Nihilism

Is Moby Dick basically a nihilist novel? Any help for my research will be welcome.

Posted By SteveD at Sun 9 Mar 2008, 2:41 PM in Moby Dick || 0 Replies

Ahab as Christ Figure

In Robert Milder's book, Exiled Royalties, he makes an interesting point about how one can view Ahab as a Christological figure. This of course depends on whom you believe to be the hero of the tale, as well as how you view the whale. Ahab indeed creates a new covenant with the crew, using his blood as a baptism of sorts, and he even holds his own mass, a dark mass of courser, but still. If you view the whale as a satanic deity, then Ahab becomes a salvific figure, or in the least, a martyr. Or, perhaps, and even more intriguing, he becomes a failed messenger of God. It's interesting to look at the book in these terms, although I don't. I still believe there is too much of Milton's Satan in him to be heroic. If anything, he is an anti-hero, a Melvillean figure run wild with passion and pride. Nonetheless, he remains an interesting figure.

Posted By lethargic1 at Sun 20 Jan 2008, 10:38 PM in Moby Dick || 0 Replies

Identifying Conflicts

What would you say are the major conflicts in Moby Dick I thought they were Ahab vs. Moby Dick (Man vs. nature) Ahab vs. crew (Man vs. Man) Ahab vs. himself (Man vs. himself) Crew vs. Moby Dick/ (Man vs. nature) I just wanted to know what everyone else's opinions on this were, and if there were any I might have missed.

Posted By blaiser18 at Mon 29 Oct 2007, 5:30 PM in Moby Dick || 2 Replies

the stone lance-head

Life imitates art. I read Ibis found the story about de stone lance-head fascinating. Here's my (rather crude) translation of a newspaper-clipping from the NRC Handelsblad of june 22 2007(a duch newspaper). Whale with harpoon. More than a century swimming around with pain in your neck and shoulders ? It happened to a Greenland whale (bowhead). Somewhere between 1880 and 1890 he got a harpoon shot in the shoulder by whalers. It was the sort of harpoon that explodes in the body of the animal. This one did that neatly, but the whale survived. Until a few weeks ago. Then whalers near Alaska did kill him and hauled him in. Deep in his blubber (or lard?) they found a piece of the now antique harpoon, close to shoulder and neck. According to scientists it must have bothered the whale all the time. The animal was approximately 130 years old. Whales like this can become 200 years old. No stone lance-head, but a series of events similar to the description in chapter 81 of Moby Dick. Oeps!

Posted By Oeps! at Thu 4 Oct 2007, 4:02 PM in Moby Dick || 0 Replies

Need help with Moby Dick.

Okay, maybe I am just not smart enough for this book but why does anybody think Moby Dick was a good book. I seriously think it should have been titled everything you never wanted to know about early 19th century whaling. There is just about enough story development in this giant book to make a small novella or a large short story. But good God, does any non-cetation bioligist want to read hundreds of pages about the difference between butchering different kinds of whales? Or how about the long winded lecture in which we learn of property laws when a dead whale with harpoons in it washes up on a beach (an event that does not even happen in the story proper.) Sure Ahab is an intresting character, but he does not make it worth it. Somebody please tell me why this is a good book.

Posted By JADJARHD at Sat 7 Jul 2007, 4:06 AM in Moby Dick || 16 Replies

Is Moby Dick really about Whaling?

I can't get rid of the thought that Mellville was describing something else than just a whaling advanture. Maybe the boring parts are exactly the parts where Mellville by using analogy explains something else. The book is about a journey or an expedition all right, but what kind of journey? Is it only an advanture book? I wonder why Mellville would write a book which became responsible for his drop in popularity at the time, and why he didn't even try to be popular again. Maybe he didn't know what he was doing writing the book. But then again one can read in Wikipedia aobut him: "In his later life, his works were no longer popular with a broad audience because of their increasingly philosophical, political and experimental tendencies." Maybe he knew exactly what he was writing; maybe we can't read between the lines as he intended for us to do. What is/was he trying to tell us?

Posted By Eddie@hotmail at Sun 22 Apr 2007, 2:04 AM in Moby Dick || 9 Replies

a language problem!

Hi! I have just read the book and, to tell the truth, I find it GREAT! The only thing I complain about is that I read the Italo Calvino's translation (which is the best one in Italian, by the way) and I'm afraid the style and the language lose something..... Unfortunaly I'm not able to read the English version, because I'm not so good at English yet and Melville's vocabulary is too a complex one for my present level (actually, there are tecnical words I do not understand even in Italian!). The reason why I joined this community is that I'm really, really, really keen on books and I'm starting to read them in English, both because I want to get exactly the same meaning the author is giving and because I think it's a good way to improve my skills (I'm 17 and I'm attending a language school in Milan).... It would be wonderful if you answered me so that we can share opinions. :D thank you! silvia

Posted By Silvia at Sun 14 Jan 2007, 12:11 PM in Moby Dick || 39 Replies

No Subject

Quite simply, Moby Dick supercedes all other novels i have read. The class I am currently taking on it spends a semester going through Moby Dick, and only Moby Dick, and probably doesn't even come close to completely understanding its mysteries. The depths to which the book goes continually amaze me. It is not a story about whaling, but a journey into human nature. Yes, as a narration, the story is slow and at times drags to a stop, but the quality of the writing is what sets it apart from everything else. I think going through it only several chapters at a time allows me to gain an understanding of it that i otherwise would not have been able to grasp. Moby Dick abounds with satire and philisophical commentaries. Surely an American classic if not the American Classic.

Posted By Unregistered at Tue 24 May 2005, 5:07 PM in Moby Dick || 0 Replies

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Moby Dick

(1851)

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