In his tome of a novel, or myth of morality, Melville claims that “The whale have no famous author and whaling have no famous chronicler.” In writing ‘Moby Dick’ he certainly succeeded in fulfilling such absence. ‘Moby Dick’ is the story of Ishmael, who boards the ship of Captain Ahab, a one legged sailor in search of vengeance against the creature that tore off his leg, the white whale Moby Dick. Though sprawling in length, it is an incredibly written book. Melville’s levels of detail and descriptions are sublime and the conclusion was breathtaking. The small details scattered through and built up throughout the novel all cumulated and it honestly had the emotional impact of the final pages of a murder mystery. 

The protagonist, Ishmael, was the most lacklustre part of the novel. Despite being in his head for over 700 pages he really doesn’t get much development and is quite flat, if the opening line “Call me Ishmael” wasn’t so iconic you would honestly start to forget he existed. However, the flamboyant cast of characters around him on the ship, the mysterious and menacing Ahab, loveable Queequeg and even the phantom-like presence of the cabin-boy Pip make up for this absence in Ishmael. 

Most authors do extensive research for their novels, whereas very few decide to include all this research within its pages. If Melville didn’t constantly break the plot up with information on the jurisdiction of whaling laws or the average inches of a male sperm whales jaw bone this book would’ve had so much rhythm to it, and as much as I enjoyed the plot the sheer amount of this filler information (Melville being paid by the word likely being the cause of this) means I can’t let myself give it five stars despite how well Melville’s prose was written. The book does however focus on the hunting and murder of whales which is pretty uncomfortable and the image of the Pequod with a severed whale head hanging from each side was harrowing and will forever haunt me.  Though the man did truly have a talent to spin words and never did I think I would learn so much about the whaling industry of the 1800s or whale species in my life, but that is just the consequence of reading ‘Moby Dick’. 

For the most part ‘Moby Dick’ was absolutely brilliant and certainly worth the read, though the two overarching flaws of Ishmael and information overload cap it at 4.5 unfortunately.