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Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.40
You Save: $ 2.60 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780142437247
ISBN: 0142437247
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 720
Publication Date: 2002-12-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780142437247
ISBN: 0142437247
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 720
Publication Date: 2002-12-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself.
Introduction by Andrew Delbanco
Explanatory Commentary by Tom Quirk
Introduction by Andrew Delbanco
Explanatory Commentary by Tom Quirk
Customer Reviews of Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Let the whale live....and kill me instead!
Review: Moby Dick is a classic....a book that you'd have to have lived in a cave on a remote island for your entire life to have not at least heard the name of.
The book has sat on my bookshelf, as part of a series of classic novels I had been given, for some time now. I always knew that 'someday' I'd open it and read it...being one of those 'I really should read it at some point' books.
Apparently I enjoyed this book a lot less than many others who have read it and reviewed it here....because I have to admit that it is one of the most dry, turgid, tedious experiences I have ever had to wade through this book, and it's under 500 pages long.
Perhaps what deterred me from enjoying it was the endless chapters that provide detailed descriptions of the size of a whale's head....or the length of a whale's tail....or the distance from a whale's head to its tail.....chapter upon chapter upon chapter that did nothing to move the story along, did nothing to flesh out the characters any better..and did nothing to hold my interest.
While the book is filled with interesting characters, the infamous Captain Ahab, the strange and curious Queequeg, the immortal 'Ishmael' who provides the narrative of the story, and who seemed, upon reading his story of life upon the Pequod, more like a clumsy, giddy little schoolgirl working on a fishing boat than an 'able bodied seaman'.
The cast of characters alone could have been far more interesting, at least to me, to explore than the wrapt appraisal of a whale's jawbone....and left me feeling as though I was reading a non-fiction work entitled 'Everything you'll never need to know about whales'.
'Call me Ishmael' may start off what for some is their favorite written work of all time. Call ME bored.....and unable to really recommend this to anyone other than someone who for some reason really desires to know more about the anatomy of a whale.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Everyone should carefully read Moby-Dick
Review: There is a direct correlation between time spent reading this book and respect for the work. Those who don't want to spend many hours on this book will not appreciate it. Those forced to read it for a class will resent it. Those who skip lots of chapters and go straight to the action will be dissatisfied with it. But those who read this book thoroughly will respect it.
I chose the word "respect" because I can't say that I "love" it. I have very conflicted feelings about it. There are flaws with this book. There is a lot of depth to this book too. It can stand up to numerous re-readings. It can be interpreted a million ways. With this book, more than any other I know, who you are affects how you read it. I don't think anyone can ever fully understand Moby-Dick. Ishmael didn't, I didn't, and I'm pretty sure Herman Melville didn't either. And that's sort of the point.
It is a work of art and deserves its title as a classic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Moby Dick is a Whale of a Tale on many levels of literary brilliance
Review: Herman Melville dedicated "Moby Dick" his 1850 epic masterpiece to his good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like that Salem sage, Sailor Melville was a man of dark brooding genius. Both of these men were opposed to the sanguine philsophy of transcendentalism whose chief exponents were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. And as Joseph Conrad explored the dark side of the human heart in "The Heart of Darkness" so too does Melville takes us to the hell of a demented captain's monomaniacal pursuit of Moby Dick the great white whale.
The long 600 page novel is narrated by Ishmael a sailor on the Pequod
captained by Captain Ahab. As his biblical namesake was a wanderer in the wilderness being forsaken by his father Abraham so to does sailor Ishamael consider himself an orphan abandonded to the winds, storms and high seas of lonely life on a whaler. The Pequod whaling ship is named for a village of Pequod Indians who were massacred by white settlers. Thirty men are aboard the doomed vessel which is symbolic of the thirty states in antebellum America. The novel says Andrew Delbanco, in the introduction to the Penguin edition has many symbolic resonances with the then current political scene. A wigwam is built on deck symbolizing the corruption of Tammany Hall in New York politics. Pip the African-American cabin boy is used as a slave by Ahab reminding readers of the Compromise of 1850 which made the fugitive slave law a reality. Throughout the book we see Melville portraying how humankind wantonly kills animals, descretes nature and practices a survival of the fitness amorality.
The Pequod is a microcosm of America and also the world. We see all types of humanity portrayed among its crew from the savage Queequeg to the humorous Stubbs and Flask to the rationalistic first mate Starbuck.
Towering over the pages of this monumental work of genius is Captain Ahab. His leg was severed by Moby Dick and he may also be sexually impotent. He is driven to the killing of Moby Dick forsaking his young family and driving his crew in his relentless quest to wreak revenge on the great whale. Who is Ahab? Like the biblical king of that name he worships an idol which in his case is the dream of revenge against Moby Dick. Delblanco points out that he closely resembles Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who was a staunch advocate of chattel slavery and an ardent opponent of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Ahab is a devlish fiend of a man whose quarter deck speech in which he enlists the crew to join him in hatred of Moby Dick reminds us of dictators skill at crowd manipulation and oratory from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam Hussein.
Moby Dick has been interpreted in countless ways by literary critics. His whiteness may represent the nothingness of nature and the indifference to human suffering seen in a godless universe. Moby Dick stands for any idol we humans worship in our hearts and heads.
The vision of life painted by Melville is harsh, bleak and pessimistic. Perhaps by clinging to the coffin of his Indian friend in the epilogue Ishmael is giving us some hope for resurrection. Pick your own interpretation.
Moby Dick contains many chapters dealing with the life and anatomy of whales, life on a whaling boat, the tools used in the whaling industry and other materials which may bore the reader. I, however, found these chapters fascinating as Melville opens our eyes to this vanished way of life.
It is hard to believe the book was published so long ago! In it you will find existentialistic despair, poetry, song, psychological plunging into the depths of the human soul as well as Melville's thoughts on various subjects and ways to view life.
"Moby Dick" is a big shaggy dog novel which may well be the best novel ever written by an American. No one aspiring to be a literate reader should refrain from devoting the time and energy required to complete it. Herman Melville deserves our respect and appreciation for inviting us to voyage across the seas with him and mad Ahab!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A magnificent book
Review: A magnificent book. It's about so much more than just a whale and a captain. It's an encyclopedia of whaling. The story is told in such beautiful prose that many times I found it hard to believe that an actual person wrote it. The only challenge is the very complex writing structure. I've never seen so many semicolons.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Review of Kindle version, not of Melvilles's masterpiece
Review: I own the Penguin published version of this book as well as the Kindle "Penguin" version. While MOST of Melville's "Leviathanic" work is here, there are some serious omissions and problems with the Kindle version of this publication. Here they are, in the order they occur to me as I write this:
1. There is no cover art
2. There are none of the very useful diagrams and drawings present at the back of the actual Penguin publication
3. There is no table of contents (This is VERY annoying in a book that begs frequent reference to various chapters, especially one already divided into 100+ chapters)
4. None of the textual emendations are enumerated
5. There are MANY textual mistakes, including wrong words, repeated words and other typos
6. The glossary from the Penguin edition has been eliminated and the Kindle stock "OAD" Dictionary is nearly worthless
7. The explanatory notes from the Penguin publication has been omitted (especially vexing given the hypertext possibilities of the Kindle)
Whether this is your first time with this seminal work, or you just want an electronic copy for your portable library, I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS RENDERING. Overall the Digireads "Penguin" version feels as though it was carelessly rushed into being.
Review Summary: Let the whale live....and kill me instead!
Review: Moby Dick is a classic....a book that you'd have to have lived in a cave on a remote island for your entire life to have not at least heard the name of.
The book has sat on my bookshelf, as part of a series of classic novels I had been given, for some time now. I always knew that 'someday' I'd open it and read it...being one of those 'I really should read it at some point' books.
Apparently I enjoyed this book a lot less than many others who have read it and reviewed it here....because I have to admit that it is one of the most dry, turgid, tedious experiences I have ever had to wade through this book, and it's under 500 pages long.
Perhaps what deterred me from enjoying it was the endless chapters that provide detailed descriptions of the size of a whale's head....or the length of a whale's tail....or the distance from a whale's head to its tail.....chapter upon chapter upon chapter that did nothing to move the story along, did nothing to flesh out the characters any better..and did nothing to hold my interest.
While the book is filled with interesting characters, the infamous Captain Ahab, the strange and curious Queequeg, the immortal 'Ishmael' who provides the narrative of the story, and who seemed, upon reading his story of life upon the Pequod, more like a clumsy, giddy little schoolgirl working on a fishing boat than an 'able bodied seaman'.
The cast of characters alone could have been far more interesting, at least to me, to explore than the wrapt appraisal of a whale's jawbone....and left me feeling as though I was reading a non-fiction work entitled 'Everything you'll never need to know about whales'.
'Call me Ishmael' may start off what for some is their favorite written work of all time. Call ME bored.....and unable to really recommend this to anyone other than someone who for some reason really desires to know more about the anatomy of a whale.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Everyone should carefully read Moby-Dick
Review: There is a direct correlation between time spent reading this book and respect for the work. Those who don't want to spend many hours on this book will not appreciate it. Those forced to read it for a class will resent it. Those who skip lots of chapters and go straight to the action will be dissatisfied with it. But those who read this book thoroughly will respect it.
I chose the word "respect" because I can't say that I "love" it. I have very conflicted feelings about it. There are flaws with this book. There is a lot of depth to this book too. It can stand up to numerous re-readings. It can be interpreted a million ways. With this book, more than any other I know, who you are affects how you read it. I don't think anyone can ever fully understand Moby-Dick. Ishmael didn't, I didn't, and I'm pretty sure Herman Melville didn't either. And that's sort of the point.
It is a work of art and deserves its title as a classic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Moby Dick is a Whale of a Tale on many levels of literary brilliance
Review: Herman Melville dedicated "Moby Dick" his 1850 epic masterpiece to his good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like that Salem sage, Sailor Melville was a man of dark brooding genius. Both of these men were opposed to the sanguine philsophy of transcendentalism whose chief exponents were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. And as Joseph Conrad explored the dark side of the human heart in "The Heart of Darkness" so too does Melville takes us to the hell of a demented captain's monomaniacal pursuit of Moby Dick the great white whale.
The long 600 page novel is narrated by Ishmael a sailor on the Pequod
captained by Captain Ahab. As his biblical namesake was a wanderer in the wilderness being forsaken by his father Abraham so to does sailor Ishamael consider himself an orphan abandonded to the winds, storms and high seas of lonely life on a whaler. The Pequod whaling ship is named for a village of Pequod Indians who were massacred by white settlers. Thirty men are aboard the doomed vessel which is symbolic of the thirty states in antebellum America. The novel says Andrew Delbanco, in the introduction to the Penguin edition has many symbolic resonances with the then current political scene. A wigwam is built on deck symbolizing the corruption of Tammany Hall in New York politics. Pip the African-American cabin boy is used as a slave by Ahab reminding readers of the Compromise of 1850 which made the fugitive slave law a reality. Throughout the book we see Melville portraying how humankind wantonly kills animals, descretes nature and practices a survival of the fitness amorality.
The Pequod is a microcosm of America and also the world. We see all types of humanity portrayed among its crew from the savage Queequeg to the humorous Stubbs and Flask to the rationalistic first mate Starbuck.
Towering over the pages of this monumental work of genius is Captain Ahab. His leg was severed by Moby Dick and he may also be sexually impotent. He is driven to the killing of Moby Dick forsaking his young family and driving his crew in his relentless quest to wreak revenge on the great whale. Who is Ahab? Like the biblical king of that name he worships an idol which in his case is the dream of revenge against Moby Dick. Delblanco points out that he closely resembles Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who was a staunch advocate of chattel slavery and an ardent opponent of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Ahab is a devlish fiend of a man whose quarter deck speech in which he enlists the crew to join him in hatred of Moby Dick reminds us of dictators skill at crowd manipulation and oratory from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam Hussein.
Moby Dick has been interpreted in countless ways by literary critics. His whiteness may represent the nothingness of nature and the indifference to human suffering seen in a godless universe. Moby Dick stands for any idol we humans worship in our hearts and heads.
The vision of life painted by Melville is harsh, bleak and pessimistic. Perhaps by clinging to the coffin of his Indian friend in the epilogue Ishmael is giving us some hope for resurrection. Pick your own interpretation.
Moby Dick contains many chapters dealing with the life and anatomy of whales, life on a whaling boat, the tools used in the whaling industry and other materials which may bore the reader. I, however, found these chapters fascinating as Melville opens our eyes to this vanished way of life.
It is hard to believe the book was published so long ago! In it you will find existentialistic despair, poetry, song, psychological plunging into the depths of the human soul as well as Melville's thoughts on various subjects and ways to view life.
"Moby Dick" is a big shaggy dog novel which may well be the best novel ever written by an American. No one aspiring to be a literate reader should refrain from devoting the time and energy required to complete it. Herman Melville deserves our respect and appreciation for inviting us to voyage across the seas with him and mad Ahab!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A magnificent book
Review: A magnificent book. It's about so much more than just a whale and a captain. It's an encyclopedia of whaling. The story is told in such beautiful prose that many times I found it hard to believe that an actual person wrote it. The only challenge is the very complex writing structure. I've never seen so many semicolons.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Review of Kindle version, not of Melvilles's masterpiece
Review: I own the Penguin published version of this book as well as the Kindle "Penguin" version. While MOST of Melville's "Leviathanic" work is here, there are some serious omissions and problems with the Kindle version of this publication. Here they are, in the order they occur to me as I write this:
1. There is no cover art
2. There are none of the very useful diagrams and drawings present at the back of the actual Penguin publication
3. There is no table of contents (This is VERY annoying in a book that begs frequent reference to various chapters, especially one already divided into 100+ chapters)
4. None of the textual emendations are enumerated
5. There are MANY textual mistakes, including wrong words, repeated words and other typos
6. The glossary from the Penguin edition has been eliminated and the Kindle stock "OAD" Dictionary is nearly worthless
7. The explanatory notes from the Penguin publication has been omitted (especially vexing given the hypertext possibilities of the Kindle)
Whether this is your first time with this seminal work, or you just want an electronic copy for your portable library, I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS RENDERING. Overall the Digireads "Penguin" version feels as though it was carelessly rushed into being.