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Title: Moby Dick (Classics Illustrated) by Herman Melville, Bill Sienkiewicz, Bill Sienhiewicz ISBN: 0-425-12023-6 Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: February, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.75 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.98 (236 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Best long novel about a huge whale I ever read in bed
Comment: However, I did not gain any weight. I recommend either "The South Beach Diet," or Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."
Rating: 4
Summary: Don't get bogged down in the middle¿the end is worth it.
Comment: The thing I always tell people about Moby Dick in that the beginning is lighthearted fun, the ending is a wonderful philosophical maelstrom, and the middle is very tedious. I think most people who make it to the end enjoy the book, but getting there is difficult because Melville spends a great deal of time either talking about the minutiae of the whaling trade, or going off onto tangents that seem to have very little to do with the narrative. Then again, I have met one person who thinks the middle is the best part. Melville's sentence structure can also be very convoluted.
At the end, it's extremely disturbing getting into Ahab's head and understanding what makes him tick. I felt unsettled for a long time after I read this. Needless to say, there's a lot there. It wasn't until some years after I'd read the book that I'd sorted it out enough in my mind to feel that I finally "got it," and I know I'm still not getting everything. As you've probably heard, everything in Moby Dick is a symbol, but no two people can completely agree on what the symbols represent. Here are my own opinions on what it all means:
The whale represents God.
The crew is mankind.
Queequeg, Dagoo, and Tashtego are the pagan nations of the Earth. (Note that Queequeg bows down to worship Ahab without hesitation)
Starbuck is Christendom.
Ishmael and the rest of the crew are men with no religion.
Elijah is a prophet.
Ahab is the Antichrist.
Fedallah is Satan, and his attendants are demons.
Even though Queequeg is one of the pagans, it is through his seeming death and resurrection midway through the novel that Ishmael lives--because of the coffin.
I never have figured out what Pip represents.
If you're buying a paperback, I'd recommend the Tor edition, (ISBN 0812543076) just because I think it's got a very nice cover painting, something publishers often don't bother with when reprinting a "classic."
Rating: 5
Summary: The Hyena
Comment: Sitting in a small room overlooking Mount Graylock on his farm in Pittsfield, Mass, Herman Melville was a magician. There are no words to describe the ineffable, and Moby Dick is *the* novel for anyone who has ever been on a quest; anyone who has wanted to know something that loomed just out of sight.
Sure, Ahab hunts the whale...but these chapters pale in comparison to Ishmael's own quest: knowing what the whale is. He is the greatest narrator in the history of fiction. The two chapters: "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "Moby-Dick" are matchless, as are "The Hynea" and the humorous "Bower in the Arsicades." One can envision Ishmael covered in tatoos of the whale's dimensions.
Is Moby-Dick tedious? Only if you're reading it as cetology. But as allegory, it is a tale of limitless drive--even self-consuming drives.
Best book ever...
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Title: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne ISBN: 0553210092 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1981 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: Moby-Dick (Cliffs Notes) by Stanley P. Baldwin ISBN: 0764586645 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, John D. Seelye ISBN: 0140390464 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1986 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Leo Damrosch ISBN: 0451527321 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684801221 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 05 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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