With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and
American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and
co-editor of `Poetry Review'. Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's
quest to avenge the whale that `reaped' his leg. The quest is an
obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a
fanatic.
But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew
is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a
co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each
individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is
Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary
reader.
Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story
Ishmael tells is above all an education:in the practice of whaling, in
the art of writing. Expanding to equal his `mighty theme' - not only the
whale but all things sublime - Melville breathes in the world's great
literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
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