Moby-Dick: Part Nonfiction Book About Whaling, Part Sea Adventure

My goodness. I didn’t expect Moby-Dick to both entertain me and serve as a nonfiction treatise about whaling and its economics, as well as an adventure story about hunting a certain whale named Moby-Dick. While this format occasionally provides the tonal whiplash at times, because I was originally in just for a seafaring adventure, I like it. It helps elucidate objectively what happens in the plot and why, thus giving me a concrete understanding of the story and its core.

Spoilers: The plot originally consisted of a typical whaling expedition to hunt whales for their sperm oil, used in many luxury products like candles, for example, which the nonfiction chapters elucidate, but is twisted into an expedition to hunt a notoriously fearsome and dangerous whale, Moby-Dick, all because the captain, Ahab, was enraged that Moby-Dick bit off his leg a while back.

While the plot feels formulaic at times, the author helped instill a sense of awe and majesty about whales, most notably by describing their roles in ancient mythology, the size of their skeletons, and even their regal nature even as they are extracted for their sperm oil and tossed aside for the sharks to devour, comparing that scene to a royal funeral. In addition, I enjoyed how different pidgin English accents are portrayed within the novel, because the crew of the ship is ethnically diverse.

Although written in a poorly spelled fashion, if I imagine reading those pidgin accents aloud, I see a sense of warmth, of levity, and camaraderie that feels more surprisingly down-to-earth and honest than modern English slang, often expressing itself in more surreal ways in my opinion, like ‘gyatt’, ‘rizz’, ‘lowkey’, or ‘lock in’. However, I have no qualms about ‘locking in’, for it has this honest and down-to-earth vibe, for lack of a better term.

But the pidgin accents are contrasted with the often theatrical, Shakespearean monologues of Captain Ahab, the main protagonist, and the madman driving his crew to hunt Moby Dick in the first place. When I read his lines, I thought his Shakespearean qualities served to accentuate the theatrical, often grandiose ambitions of the main character, or his madness. To add to the fire, he even curses God in Latin when he forges the harpoon meant to kill Moby-Dick, the language of the Church, the rock on which God put his hold on this mortal earth, only to make a point on how deranged his quest for vengeance was.

Although I like how the author juxtaposes Ahab’s lines with characters, and the nonfiction chapters explaining in objective depth how important the whaling expedition was in the novel, the novel had only one fault. The protagonist, Ishmael, is the most underdeveloped character I have ever seen, period. He’s just a random lad who wants to see the world and talks like an encyclopedia at times. If he serves no purpose in the plot and has absolutely no personality, why bother to include him? At least at the end, the author should have given him a chapter to reflect on his experiences!

Moby-Dick, in essence, is an entertaining novel that both entertains and informs. If the author cut Ishmael out or expanded on him learning something by the end of the novel, it would more so justify his existence within the novel.