Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
The Pequod sets sail from Nantucket under Captain Ahab, a brooding whaling master who has lost a leg to a great white sperm whale called Moby Dick. Narrated by the wandering sailor Ishmael, the voyage begins as an ordinary commercial hunt but soon reveals Ahab's true purpose: a monomaniacal quest for vengeance against the whale that maimed him. As the ship roams the world's oceans, Ishmael chronicles the crew, the brutal craft of whaling, and the natural history of the leviathan, while Ahab drives everyone toward a final, fatal confrontation.
More than an adventure tale, the novel is a vast meditation on obsession, fate, faith, and humanity's struggle against an indifferent universe. Melville weaves together philosophy, science, scripture, and high tragedy, making the white whale an inexhaustible symbol that resists any single meaning. Sprawling, strange, and endlessly ambitious, it stands among the greatest works in American literature.
How it begins
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. “While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.” — Hackluyt. “WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval . This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.” — Webster’s Dictionary. “WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen ; A.S. Walw-ian , to roll, to wallow.” — Richardson’s Dictionary. חו, Hebrew . ϰητος, Greek . CETUS, Latin . WHŒL, Anglo-Saxon . HVALT, Danish . WAL, Dutch . HWAL, Swedish . HVALUR, Icelandic . WHALE, English . BALEINE, French . BALLENA, Spanish . PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee . PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan . EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.