First published in 1851, this realistic account of a whaling voyage, drawing on Melville's own experience as a merchant seaman, contains within a symbolic account of the conflict between man and his fate. It is the fruit of Melville's three-year residence in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The extraordinary vigor and color of this novel and its philosophical and allegorical undertones reflecting on the nature of evil have given it a place among the classic sea stories and rendered it a perennial favorite.
The outcast youth Ishmael, succumbing to wanderlust during a dreary New England autumn, goes to New Bedford, planning to ship on a whaler. There he draws as a roommate Queequeg, a Polynesian prince, and the two become the best of comrades despite their philosophical differences and foreign backgrounds.
Ishmael and Queequeg go to Nantucket and sign on the Pequod, which sails on Christmas Day under the command of the one-legged Captain Ahab. Ahab is no ordinary whaler: he has set himself on a monomaniacal course to capture the fierce, cunning white whale, Moby Dick, which tore away his leg during their last encounter |
