Book Report on Moby Dick
by
Chris Yarborough


My book report is over the book "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville.

The story is of a deranged whaling captain's obsessive voyage to find and destroy the great white whale that had ripped off his leg, the novel is at once an exciting sea story, a sociological critique of various American class and racial prejudices, a repository of information about whales and whaling, and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of good and evil, of man and his fate.

While some may enjoy the book for it's thourough representation of sea life in the early 1800's, I found it exceedingly discomfortable to wade through the heavily rhythmic, rhetorical prose style. For example, twelve whole chapters are devoted to the philosphical examination of a whale carcass, and while the first lines may be classic and memorable, they decend into petty blather for an excessive and dragging sixteen chapters. The Great White Whale, central figure in the book, is treated to an insignificant portion, all of three chapters. An entire chapter is dedicated to the measurement of a deceased Sperm Whale, beginning with the exciting description: "Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spouthole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones"... Valium for the brain.

Irony - The saviour coffin, and the misbegotten missionary

After the doomed fight with the whale, only Ishmael survives. A crew member had seen death coming and built his own coffin. As the ship sinks, the coffin bobs to the surface and becomes Ishmael's lifeboat, giving life where it's sole purpose had been the containment of dead men. A brilliant incident of situational irony.

A second case of situational irony is Queequeg. Queequeg is a black man, typically portrayed at the time the book was written as evil, dangerous and untrustworthy. To the shame of the crew, Queequeg turns out to be one of the few stable minds on board.

Symbolism - The hellbent Captain

The great white whale symbolizes evil; however, Ahab's obsession to destroy the whale becomes personally sybolic of an even darker devil. While hunting whales was a legitimate and even profitable enterprise, Ahab had turned it into a mad chase for revenge. Thus, Melville reveals, with unerring skill and passion, a dilemma that has plagued makind since the garden of Eden, the question of Means vs. Ends.