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Moby Dick is strictly for adults, which is not to say it's salacious or titillating (which, after all, is really just an appeal to that which is most adolescent in us). No, Moby Dick is a book for people who have experienced something of life, felt the painful disappointment of easy answers, smelled the fear of their own mortality and searched frantically for a solution to the puzzle of being alive. The fact that this book is often assigned to adolescents to read is a crime. It's like assigning Einstein's theory of relativity to a class of basket weavers.
A little more respect, please. A person ought to be fairly well convinced they " re going to die some day before reading Moby Dick - which is not to say he or she ought to be glum or fatalistic. Moby Dick is neither. It's surprisingly witty and ironic, sometimes even charming, but underneath runs a somber current that carries along with it formidable questions about what it means to be human, how we all suffer, even when we do the right things, and how a providential God can be easily confused with uncaring fate. Melville is a master of ambiguity and nuance. His characters, who seem caricatures at first, gradually reveal a depth of complexity that has had scholars hard at work for years.
From Queequeeg, the agreeable savage, to Starbuck (yes, folks, the coffee shop is named after someone), whose stalwart Protestantism is put to the test, and on to Ahab, the mad, raving, conflicted Captain, and Ishmael, the clever, pliable narrator, each character reveals a depth of personality that makes you feel you know them and wins your empathy, even as their ship, the Pequod, plunges on in pursuit its unlikely objective, the destruction of a singularly vindictive whale, Moby Dick. Is Moby Dick some mad brute, an animal driven to distraction by the harassment of its predators? Or is it, as Ahab believes, an agent of the living God, bent on punishing the sinful pride of man, or worse - a mere mask behind which hides indifferent nature, spawned by the earth to reek mayhem and destruction to no apparent end? Ahab aims to find out and hijacks the loyalties of his crew in pursuit of his answer, distracting them from the official reason for their voyage, the acquisition of whale oil, an important commodity in the 1840 's, setting them on a course that is sacrilege on more than one level. Melville spends a lot of time examining the ins-and-outs of the whaling business, from the outfitting of a ship, to the process of capturing whales, to the intricacies of extracting whale oil and trying it, and much more; which can be rather off-putting to the causal reader.
But be forewarned: Moby Dick is not for the casual reader. This is no Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye which will reward you with an amusing story even if you " re not willing to dig deeper. If you intend to skim over Moby Dick, forget it. You will find it dull and unrewarding.
But if you are willing to surrender some uninterrupted hours to the reading and some time, during the process for reflection, you will have one of the richest literary experiences of your life. You will come away with a foundation of knowledge about something you probably never considered, much less cared about, how a whaling voyage in the 1840 's played out, a fascinating glimpse into the trials and tribulations facing brave men bent on bringing home a vital energy source that lit homes and businesses in the years before crude oil was discovered and processed. And during the process you will be treated to Melville's philosophical musings, provoked by the processes themselves and relevant to the unfolding events, serving to underpin the thematic union of the book. And on top of it all you will get a rousing good sea story with some jaw dropping descriptive passages and a richly embroidered narrative, a ship world, peopled by an interesting cast of characters, and some food for thought that ought to stick in your teeth for some time. Yet Moby Dick is not for the half-hearted, be they adolescents who are trying to skate by with the least effort, or simply those who look to literature as a distraction from life rather a mirror of it. But for those who are willing to set sail in more challenging waters, Melville's classic will not disappoint.
It will take you into a coursing jet stream, exhilarating to navigate, both spiritually and intellectually.
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Research essay sample on Moby Dick Whale Oil Life
