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| Captain Ahab |
Today, The Grandma, who is still in Venice, wants to talk about one of her
favourite novels: Herman Melville’s Moby
Dick.
Moby Dick,
aka The
Whale was published in October,
18 1851 during the period of the American Renaissance.
Sailor Ishmael tells
the story of the obsessive quest of Ahab,
captain of the whaler the Pequod,
for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale which on the previous whaling voyage
destroyed his ship and severed his leg at the knee.
Melville’s
literary inspirations were Shakespeare
and the Bible. The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard to
catch actual albino whale Mocha Dick, and the ending is based
on the sinking of the whaler Essex
by a whale.
The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of
extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse
crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and
the existence of God.
In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and
literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean
stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.
The novel
was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in
1891, but during the 20th century, its reputation as a Great American Novel was
established.
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| A scene of Moby Dick |
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby Dick (1851).
His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to Scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts.
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
Herman Melville
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