Moby-Dick

I've been reading this all time classic for a year and a half now. But while it took me from August '09 to February '11 to get through the first forty percent of the book, I've conquered the final sixty percent in the last week alone. And I have some very mixed feelings about the novel. I apologize in advance if this post becomes exceedingly lengthy or sloppy at times or too all-inclusive for its own good - although I can't think of a more suitable post for an exceedingly lengthy, sometimes sloppy, all-inclusive book like Moby-Dick. Let's start with the good. At its best, Moby-Dickreads like a beautiful poem or a pitch-perfect song. Adventure abounds. The narrator - we can call him Ishmael - offers absurdly deep philosophical reflection on a multitude of elements of the human experience. He spends whole chapters thinking and wondering about history, geography, social issues both in America and in the world at large, and the human experience in general. It's simply amazing that Melville was able to take something so simple - a long and arduous boat ride - and stretch it into 135 chapters that fire upon so many different subjects and topics. Ishmael will be laboring while tied at the waist to a fellow whaler for security, and it'll pique a lengthy discussion about holy matrimony and the ties that bind, for example. Symbolism abounds in places both obvious (Ahab's quest for revenge against the "white whale" has become a pop culture metaphor for obsession) and minute, such as the way the nationalities of the crew members allows their interactions to parallel many international discords past and present (present being 1850, of course). You get the sense while reading Moby-Dick that Melville has tried to embed a deeper meaning into nearly every event that occurs over the enormous span of 135 chapters. And that's commendable. It's obvious to me, having read the book now, why the novel is such an English teacher's wet dream. You can analyze sentence after sentence for thematic nuances or "big picture" worldly meaning and never run out of metaphors and new ways to interpret the text. It is, all things considered, one of the smartest and most carefully written books I have ever read. That said, let's turn to my biggest issue with the novel: it is not very well paced. I know this may seem like a self-contradicting statement, as I only just referred to Melville's writing as both "smart and careful" and "like a pitch-perfect song." But while it's true that individual chapters and scenes in Moby-Dick each work extremely well, the sum of the parts leaves a bit to be desired. Ishmael is sloppy, at times, in laying out his paragraphs and sentences. There are entire chapters that exist simply as an addendum to previous chapters. "I'd like to go back and expand upon the tools used for the oil-rendering process," Ishmael will say, a few chapters after the one about oil-rendering. Perhaps it's an artifact of the way novel writing worked in the 1850s, but why not just go back during the editing process and expand upon that chapter within the confines of, say, that chapter? Maybe Melville intentionally allowed Ishmael to backtrack and expand upon his earlier narrative. Maybe Melville felt that it added a more human or realistic tone to Ishmael's story. But first of all, I doubt that, and second of all, either way, it felt distracting and sloppy. It's one thing to tell a story out of order for effects like juxtaposition and flashbacks and parallels and two separate timelines having back-to-back climaxes within the narrative, but this wasn't a case of breaking chronological order for effect. It was only a case of "oh yeah, I forgot to mention something earlier." There was a unique narrative frame - or lack thereof - for Moby-Dick in which different chapters served very different purposes. Some advanced the story, some allowed Ishmael to wax philosophical about something or other, and some were very detailed lessons on the whaling industry and various components of the practice. There are four straight chapters, for example, in which Ishmael simply compares and contrasts sperm whales and right whales. Some chapters are even written with stage directions, which sort of disrupted the narrative flow for me; in a first-person narrative, why have occasional soliloquies and dialogues for which the narrator isn't present? One of the longest chapters in the book consists of Ishmael defending the whaling practice as a noble and timeless one. One of the shortest involves Ishmael eating breakfast. The way it's all put together gives you the sense that the novel is trying to be too many types of books all at once. Is it a reference book about whaling? Partially, yes, and it's clear that Melville has done exhaustive research on the practice. But is it not an epic adventure story? Well, yes - it's that too. And is it a stream-of-conscious rambling of sorts? Most definitely. And it succeeds at all the different things it tries to be. But as a whole, it feels identity-less, almost. I can't really put it any better than this negative review of Moby-Dick from 1851: "An ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition." Another small complaint I'll tack on is that Melville was extremely heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, going so far as to have a Far Eastern harpooner occasionally prophesy the impending doom of Ahab and his ship. Bad omens pop up every few chapters and toward the end of the book Melville is essentially screaming "they're all gonna die!" right in our faces. I know literary devices exist for a reason, but I preferred the obvious conclusion of the story to be hinted at, rather than outright forecasted at various points throughout the tale. Melville does a great job at slowly creating a foreboding sense of doom, but he ruins it, in my mind, by dwelling on it in the foreground rather than letting it build up menacingly in the background. All of that said, the book's conclusion was pretty enjoyable to read. Ahab descends ever more into madness and it's in these final chapters that the story feels purest from a narrative framework standpoint. With Ahab's fall imminent, Ishmael wastes no time describing the whaling industry anymore or pondering social norms and customs. Instead, it's nothing but mood-setting and plot development. The inevitable ending did feel a tad abrupt, and I can see why some readers might be upset that after hundreds of pages of build-up, the climax and falling action took all of a few pages to get through. Frankly, I was just glad the book was over. So yeah. Moby-Dick was beautiful and impressive, but not without some major and fundamental flaws - namely, that it tried to be too many different things all at once. I can't really say whether or not anyone else should bother reading it. Just be warned, should you choose to do so, what you're getting yourself into. But by the same token, get ready for one of the deepest and most interesting texts that the Western canon has to offer.