Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has come from an inauspicious beginning to being considered a ‘great American novel’. Its nod to gothic romantic fiction, intriguing plot setup and iconic characters promise a dark adventure into the unknown. But modern readers might struggle with the novel’s length, uneven pace and many diversions. Instead, Moby Dick’s greater legacy may lie in its innovations in form and style which have inspired other writers to adopt the template.

“Call me Ishmael” is the famous opening sentence of Moby Dick. Immediately, the reader has two thoughts. The first is the connection to the Biblical Ishmael, an exile and outcast. The second is that if he is asking you to call him ‘Ishmael’ it may not be his real name. Perhaps it is a name he has chosen to fit how he sees himself.

Stir crazy, Ismael yearns for the sea. But he does not want to be a passenger. He wants the respectability of paid work, the wholesomeness of exercise and to take in the sea, the water and the pure air.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

His arrival in Nantucket is late in the season and has to take what lodgings he can find. The best is to share a room at an inn with a harpooner also looking for a ship.

Ishmael wakes in the night to find his roommate is a man of dark complexion with a tattooed face and a shaven head. Ishmael is convinced he is an abominable savage and a cannibal. When the man’s smoking and pagan rituals become too much for Ishmael, he complains to the landlord who assures him Queequeg will not harm him.

Once he calms down, Ishmael sees that Queequeg is kind and generous and they quickly become friends. Queequeg’s story is not unlike Ishmael’s. He too left his island home due to a yearning for adventure and to see the world. They even decide to voyage together and, after consulting his idol, Queequeg says he trusts Ishmael to choose a ship for them both.

Down at the wharf, Ishmael determines that the Pequod is the best-looking ship on offer. After agreeing to terms for Queequeg and himself, Ishmael asks after the captain on voyage – Captain Ahab. Ishmael is told Ahab is a queer, quiet, pained man who lost a leg to a whale. A man both ungodly and god-like.

There is no sign of Ahab as the work begins to get the ship underway. Orders are given by others who assure the sailors that Ahab is fine and aboard. The men in charge include the sensible, brave Starbuck; the easy-going, good-humoured, indifferent to danger Stubb, and Flask who sees no beauty in whales and makes it a point of honour to hunt them.

It is several days after they are at sea before Ahab makes his appearance, and when he does he makes an impression.

I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarterdeck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ships ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master- eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.

Ahab addresses the crew. He holds up a $16 gold coin and offers it as a reward to whoever raises a white whale. A whale with a wrinkled brow, a crooked jaw and three harpoon punctures on his starboard fluke. The ship’s three harpooners, including Queequeg have all heard of this whale – Moby Dick – the whale that took Ahab’s leg.

Rumours of Moby Dick – a white whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity – have accumulated over time. And while Ishmael argues that whalers are less inclined to superstition than other sailors, he admits that the same is not true when it comes to stories of Moby Dick. Only Starbuck expresses any misgivings about Ahab’s mission.

“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooners and seamen, running closer to the excited old man: “a sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!”

“God bless ye,” [Ahab] seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men. Steward! Go draw a great measure of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? Art not game for Moby Dick?”

“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? It will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”

But whether an intentional creation or not, Ahab has an impenetrable mystique. His mixture of madness and robust sanity makes it easy to dismiss signs of madness as misunderstandings. If he had made his intentions clear before voyage he would never have been chosen as captain. But now he has a crew that suits his purpose, a crew that is with him and anyone against him is powerless against his stature.

“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis.” So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating Lancers at their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitching them; meanwhile glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.

And so, the Pequod sails on despite prophetic warnings to its awaiting fate.

First published in 1851, Moby Dick (or The Whale) is the magnum opus of Herman Melville. The novel was not an initially success. American public tastes had moved away from seafaring tales towards the Western and critics were not as impressed with Melville as they were by his friend and inspiration, Nathanial Hawthorne.

Over time however, the novel gained considerably in reputation. To the extent that it is considered by some to be a candidate for the ‘Great American Novel’, or at least belonging to a sub-genre of that description.

Perhaps the aspect that speaks most clearly to the novel’s Americanness is that the Pequod and its crew are a microcosm of early America. The ship is crewed by rebels, outcasts and runaways. Though an ethnically diverse crew, prejudicial thoughts are subdued for the moment as they are all mutually dependant on each other. Respect for specialist skills and admonition towards any perceived to be shirking their workload takes precedence over other considerations they may have on the mainland. Opportunity, skill, work and reward is the great equaliser. Yet the culture aboard the Pequod is not necessarily democratic or equal. There remains a sense of pessimism towards the American Dream, social reform or earthly utopia.

When that workload is at its peak – when a whale is caught and needs to be harvested – the ship turns into a floating factory. The growing era of industrial market-economy capitalism and its effect on people is also represented in the novel. The effect on nature is perhaps less intended at the time. At one point, scepticism is expressed at the thought that whales could ever be over-hunted the way the American buffalo has been. But for modern reader, the connection is inescapable.

I enjoyed the early chapters of Moby Dick best. They reminded me of novels I have recently reread such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). In particular, it was the way these novels quickly intrigue the reader with the promise of a dark tale of peril, adventure and lines better not crossed. A pretty, poetic style of writing and the foreshadowing via prophetic warnings provides the reader with an early sense that they are about to enjoy an immersion into nineteenth-century gothic romance. Later in the novel, the Pequod’s encounters with other passing whaling ships reminded me too of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and its most famous adaptation, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

These tales seem to warn the reader that though the world has been largely explored, darkness, danger and terror still exist. Nature is not to be tamed and humans confront it at their peril. The albino whale that is the subject of Ahab’s obsession is nature’s most obvious symbol in the novel. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the whale is impervious to attempts to subdue and control it. Unlike Ahab, who is motivated by revenge, Moby Dick has no motive against him. Like nature, Moby Dick is unfeeling and uninterested. The destruction it wreaks is not personal.

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”

Moby Dick is also full of Biblical allusions. Ishmael and Ahab are both Biblical names. In each case their characters and fates are connected to their Biblical counterparts. The novel also makes use of prophecies and frequent references to Biblical stories especially the most obvious one of Jonah. It is perhaps a reminder of how by the time Moby Dick was written, tragedies befalling characters who violate the laws of nature are replacing those where they break the laws of God. Again, I am reminded of Frankenstein.

In directing his thirst for revenge for the way life has treated him at the whale who took his leg, Ahab is not just angry at nature but at God. The whale is substitute or replacement for the God Ahab is truly angry at. His quest is therefore a blasphemous one, its tasks are sacrilegious. His obsession has poisoned any moral clarity he ever had. When anointing a harpoon with blood, Ahab says “I baptise you, not in the name of the Father but in the name of the Devil”, which Melville once said could be the novel’s secret motto.

Much is made, especially by American interpreters, of the racial connotations of the whale’s whiteness, the pursuit of which is self-destructive. But it is worth also considering that all aboard the Pequod are needy, damaged men, full of grievance. Men who believe that some due entitlement has been denied them. Consequently, they have sought out and been exposed to radicalism that has made them dangerous. This has combined to set them on a course they believe will save them but which to the reader seems more like madness and certain doom.

Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale around the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals – morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so offered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge.

Though I enjoyed the style of the early chapters, the novel’s style changes considerably once we have left port. Where it was initially a tale narrated by Ishmael, the narration becomes third-person in places. Sometimes we are given passages best described as soliloquies; inner thoughts of other characters seemingly spoken out loud as if we are reading a play rather than a novel. Sometimes it can be described as almost stream-of-consciousness. While initially we seem to be reading Ishmael’s journal as he records events soon after they occur, at others we seem to be told this story in retrospect from a distant future.  

[Ahab alone] They think me mad – Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and – Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophecy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one.

Another aspect to Moby Dick soon becomes apparent once the reader gets into the novel. Although, it appears to have much in common with Gothic romances of its period, Moby Dick can also be considered a pioneer of the ‘Encyclopaedic Novel’. The tale of Ishmael, Ahab and others on their hunt for Moby Dick is interspersed with chapters of the larger subject of whales and whale hunting.

These chapters cover a vast range of subjects from the different parts of the ship and their functions; the works aboard the ship for processing whale carcasses; the chain of command; difference between whalers of different countries; even international law with regards to rights to whales. There is information on the role of whaling in history and commerce; of people who do not appreciate the danger of whaling to deliver the products they enjoy; of depictions of whales in ancient myth and in art in a variety of mediums; of whale meat as food across cultures. And, of course, there is a great deal of information on whale biology – their heads, skulls and brains; their breathing, blowholes and spouting; their skin and blubber; their birthing, nursing and mothering; their social structures; their skeletons and fossils. I could go on and Melville certainly does.

It is this extra material that characterises the encyclopaedic novel. Its purpose is to provide sense of connection between the narrow scope of the novel’s plot and characters and a whole universe beyond it. It places the story within a larger context. Moby Dick is an early example of this approach. Later examples include Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Don DeLillo’s Underworld.

So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or worse still and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

This was an aspect of Moby Dick I enjoyed the least. While some of the material was interesting, and the volume and variety of detail was very impressive, most of it felt superfluous. To me they were often unwelcome interruptions to the narrative.

The shifts in style, format, tense and other aspects probably reflects the way Moby Dick was written. It was not written with a plan or outline in mind. Instead, it was written spasmodically, feverishly and fluidly almost like a forerunner to modernism. It also went through radical revisions without much effort at tidying up. These aspects probably did not help my enjoyment of the novel.

It may be the case that Moby Dick’s shortcomings are partly responsible for its influence and endurance. I wonder if many writers read it and, while appreciating its merits and innovations, thought they could improve on its issues, to better incorporate the encyclopaedic elements without interrupting the narrative and pacing of the novel. I have yet to read the examples of other encyclopaedic novels above, but I have read The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer which was partly modelled on Moby Dick. There too I struggled to stay engaged with a long novel where the story was broken up by long diversions into the backstories of the characters.

Understandably, most of the scientific information in Moby Dick is very outdated. Despite acknowledging that whales are warm blooded, breathe air, give birth to live young, nurse and have horizontal tails, Melville as others of his time can’t discard the idea that whales are fish. It made me wonder if we have less tolerance for non-fiction that has not aged well than for fiction. Given that it was published not long before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and that Melville lived another forty years after the novel was published, it is tempting to wonder if there was any thought to updating it.

I think it is good that it was not. Both the fictional and non-fictional aspects of a novel place it in a specific time and place. It is an inevitable extratextual context no writer intends but is valuable for the reader to consider. Our ideas on scientific fact as well as social norms of culture and race have moved on and it is interesting to see representations of both in their historical context alongside each other in one book.

The concept and themes of Moby Dick are brilliant enough to engage most readers. Its innovations and breaks with convention have inspired subsequent writers. Its flaws have made it a difficult book to enjoy and understand and left its potential unrealised. Yet, ironically, these too have perhaps inspired writers to try their hand at improving on the model.