Herman Melville
Published: 2018-09-26
Total Pages: 380
Get eBook
Annotations the adventure novel Moby Dick (Planet), the most famous of Herman Melville and the most important of his career. The novel tells the story of a young man who embarks on a whaling ship, the Pequod. His authoritarian captain, Ahab, suffered an accident with a whale that amputated his leg. Obsessed with taking revenge on her, he baptizes her as Moby Dick and sets out to chase her along with other companions, among them the protagonist: Ismael. the history of the most famous sperm whale in modern literature. But he suggests doing it calmly, "in a month," to assimilate it and delight in its wealth. Beyond being an adventure novel, Moby Dick is, according to the critic, one of the most complicated books to read, due to the complexity of its language. Herman Melville (New York, 1819-1891) writes about his own experience, since he traveled for years as a crewman on several ships, including a whaler. He was also inspired by the case of a whaling ship from Nantucket (Massachusetts, United States), which was attacked by a white whale. This served to shape the adventure of Ismael, who once embarked discovered that the true intention of Ahab is none other than to hunt down the famous Moby Dick. The young man tells in flashback how he survived the beasts of the animal, many times compared to the Leviathan of the Bible. Melville published this novel in 1850, but like the rest of his work he passed without pain or glory and it took many years before he began to be considered one of the great writers of American symbolism. The author resorts to allegory and symbolism to represent in Moby Dick the nature that is beyond the reach of man and in Captain Ahab the anger and the determination to achieve an end, a goal in his life.