October Read - final thoughts on the big Mo-D.

What? They all die in the end? Someone should have warned me!

Just kidding.

Pages 601-655

Look to the horizon – it’s a bird, it’s a ship, it’s…dun, dun DUN…an OMEN. An oooooooommmmmeeeeeeen! There are lots of omens of impending doom, and then finally, on page 625, we finally spot Moby Dick. Thirty pages from the end, people. It took Ishmael over 100 pages just to get on the flipping boat, and we only get thirty pages of the most epic whale-vs-human battle in literary history. Anyway, the whale picks off crew members one by one and then takes the whole ship down. Ishmael survives and is picked up by a passing ship.

Best line: Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! [pg 622]

(The first few paragraphs of chapter 132 are also quite beautiful in their description of the sea and sky, but they were too long to type out here.)

The book has pros and cons, as does any literary classic. And so I present to you...

The Pros and Cons of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," according to Charity:
Pros:
When you're done, you can say you've read it.
There's like some nice prose and stuff.

Cons:
The beginning (boring)
The middle (boring)
The end (only slightly less boring)

My main beef with the book (other than the boring bits) is the POV. We start out in Ishmael's first-person Point of View, but then we start jumping in and out of Ahab's head, and seeing what Ahab does alone in his cabin. By the end, Ishmael is an omniscient narrator, describing everything as though he was in every place, in everyone's head. YOU CAN'T HAVE AN OMNISCIENT FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR, HERMAN! Maybe he's trying to make some sort of point or something, but I see it as sloppy writing. If I had to rate it on a responsibility scale, it would rank only slightly higher than the narrative threads of Glee.

The book came out in the mid-1800's to mixed reviews. My favorite of the several that are printed in the back of my Barnes & Noble Classics edition is the one from January 1852, printed in the New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review:

Mr. Melville is evidently trying to ascertain how far the public will consent to be imposed upon. He is gauging, at once, our gullibility and our patience. [...] [I]f there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville's.

Since then, there have been many cinematic interpretations of this classic work. Perhaps my favorite can be found in two parts on that great cinematic forum, YouTube:

Part 1

Part 2

Okay, I'm done. This was the only book I finished this month, and I am okay with that. :-)