What makes Moby Dick a scary book for people today is our ingrained need to get to the end and "figure it out." We read like college students cramming for an exam: what does it mean? what is the lesson? what is the moral of the story? blah, blah, blah. We've lost the art of reading for the pure pleasure of it. The epics of antiquity were sung by bards night after night to entertain. People had nowhere to go or do at night, so they launched themselves on the high seas of imagination and poetic music. This what Moby Dick is. Enjoy the ride. Let the meaning come to you, don't you go raping the book to uncover the meaning. Read it again and again. It's in the memory that a book reveals itself.

I’m in my later 60’s and I’m finally reading it. Great joy. I think we need to recognize the true greatness of Melville’s “Moby Dick”.

This video inspired me to embark on the journey of this beautiful novel and discover my favorite book of my life during my freshman year of college.

The best novel I ever read and will re-read.

I adore Herman Melville and it was so good to hear this background about his life. But it makes me want to cry when i know about so many other lesser authors (Anne Bronte, I'm looking at you) who did get published at this time. All I can say is Herman Melville, I'm glad you found Nathanial Hawthorne. And Anne Bronte, good thing you had your sisters Charlottte and Emily to help you get published.

Moby Dick is one of those books I have read more than once and could read again and again, even though it is for me a difficult read. One of the most rewarding novels of my life that sticks with me and seems bottomless in depth and meaning and, yes, even great pleasure.

one thing that Melville said that impressed me was he called John Brown (whose body is mouldering in the grave), he called him "the meteor of the war" in other words the heavenly body that appeared and predicted the civil war was arriving. a really riveting symbol.

I read the final voyage of the whaling ship Essex as a new release recommended by radio 4 , I sat in my garden with half a bottle of rum and read it in a day. never before and never since have i been so consumed by a book . I contacted Nathaniel afterwards saying how ,much I enjoyed the book and he kindly responded. to see him in the flesh is re-assuring in a strange way. Its a novel of difficult times and it turns some otherwise confident people to uncertainty and hording in later life. maybe not so irrational after all.

I wonder if Mr. Philibrick will do a follow-up someday entitled "Why Read Confidence-Man: His Masquerade" to give Melville final and (almost) equally impressive work some love?

The book is funny, charming and engaging with great larger than life characters on an adventure without parallel. Put down your phone and read it!

I enjoyed Moby Dick especially because Ishmael the narrator is insightful and witty, so reading the book was sort of like hanging out with a fascinating person who has a droll sense of humor.

I read it in high school: a semester-long project with a long paper at the end. I'm 72 and rereading Moby Dick for the first time.

I have to read this book. It is time.

Melville is motivational. wow

Because it's the greatest American novel ever written, still.

People always see different things in art, but for his part, Melville revealed to Hawthorne he had given The Whale a "secret motto" which Ahab “deliriously howled” in chapter 113 when he tempered the special harpoon in men's blood, Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli! (I do not baptize you in the name of the Father, but in the name of the Devil!) It seems to me Melville wanted Moby Dick to “baptize” the reader in his views. This seems further borne out by telling him in later letter, "I have written a wicked book."

Spoiler alert; The whale signifies a whale

This is a neat little book on Moby Dick, enjoyable & enlightening.

Moby Dick is worth the read if only for Ahab's curse toward the end.

Moby Dick is a great novel. It's true you should have some real world experience to fully absorb it's goodness.

Luckily it was never assigned to me. Literature is wasted on the young (Mostly). I read it in my dotage 😁 and loved it.

I just finished reading Moby Dick for the second time and agree you should read it. But why read Why Read Moby-Dick? This guy wrote an entire book about why you should read another book, and all he had to say was anecdotes about the author's life and shallow remarks like that is has many short standalone chapters that are good to read on a flight?

It is just a straight-forward whaling adventure. After reading it you can get the Cliff Notes and read about the allegory and symbolism imputed to it if you want. But after you've stated those -- the whale means this, Ahab means that, then what? More interesting, but less talked about is the occasional paragraph when Melville discusses his personal thoughts about various subjects -- religion, prejudice, death, etc. These philosophical parts of Moby Dick are difficult to understand because he lapses into semi-archaic language and not-standard punctuation (even for his day). I would guess that these passages comprise less than 5% of the book.

"If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can."- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Its a meta-physical survival guide. An American prose bible

For one to truly understand Moby Dick, they must first read Jed Mckenna’s “Spiritually incorrect englightment” then all will be clear.

I like Elmo. eet eeet eeet.

BTW, the book isn't all that long. I think, 500 pages. Try "The Count of Monte Cristo"! It's over 1200 pages of fine print. And "Don Quixote" was the most difficult work of literature for me to get through. I still have nothing good to say about *it*.

This "expert" seems to have learned nothing from Moby-Dick. He discourses not a little concerning Melville yet he fails to address the elements of the novel. The most outstanding feature revealed by Melville in the narrative is his Reformed Protestantism. The names of characters and his biblical allusions reveal the essence of the author's metaphysics (world view, view of reality) which is founded on Calvin's doctrine of Predestination. The plot concerns humanity's struggle to overcome Fate and the consequences that befall individuals who persist in this struggle. Overly, Moby-Dick is a primarily a treatise on Morality packaged within an awesome and thrilling adventure story.

I haven’t read the whole novel, but if it’s about a whale taking someone’s limb or causing havoc and someone trying to seek revenge, to me it just shows that revenge and stuff like that, sometimes it’s just better to let it go, and getting caught up in that hate can cause a lot more harm than good

Moby Dick could have been written in a bout one third the pages addressing the allegory and symbolism. Most of it was a historical documentation of whaling and whales.

It does have demagogic prejudice, so, the great American novel.

Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. "Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick - but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?" "Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave." "Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!" "God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?" "I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market." "Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!" "He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow." "Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous." "Hark ye yet again - the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn - living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards - the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak! - Aye, aye! thy silence, then, THAT voices thee. (ASIDE) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion." "God keep me! - keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on. "The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab. Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian. "Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts - long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me - here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill! "Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see that - Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp - away, thou ague! "Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright. "In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, THAT had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there - yon three most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, THAT shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!" Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him. "Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!" Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter. "Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow - Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin. Back to Top

Moby Dick is mostly a bit of a waste of time. It is sometimes a pacy drama, sometimes a specialist hobby encyclopaedia (yawn), sometimes morally sound to present day thinking, and very occasionally excellent. There is a slap-in the face to American prejudice directed towards people of archaic cultures. And otherwise it is its own prejudiced drivel. "It is theirs" is it? Or is it casual anti-English disingenuous propaganda/demagoguery. It is also not a religious experience it is a boastful (boorish) experience of someone desperately trying to tell us that he the author is actually educated, and as educated as perhaps anyone else, probably even in Europe. Surely Jefferson would have sighed bashfully (although even he abolished the 1st Bank of the United States). Typically why are the Persian fire-eaters so ideal an example to compare? Did they really attain the heights of human adoration of the Gods, or does it just sound good to the less well educated? '[The Zoroastrian] Great Fires were vehicles of propaganda... The priests of these respective "Royal Fires" are said to have competed with each other to draw pilgrims by promoting the legends and miracles that were "Purported" to have occurred at their respective sites.' What a fine example to deploy as a comparable adoration of life and existence... Not. Perhaps the whales are only purported to be in adoration of the Gods!? The fact that he hates Christianity is by the by. It's sounds like an entirely inapposite rant in the middle of a work of literature! Okay, but it's relatively crude and lacks interesting substance. Rather American-centric. And great literature it ain't, except the fact that the captain (consumed by a deep and dark sense of vengeance), inspires and persuades the crew (incredibly) to abandon their day job, and follow him on a terrible mission of revenge!? These pages are proper literature; and his moods are compelling and Queequeg particularly at the beginning, but alas, there just ain't a lot else. I wouldn't recommend it. It is mostly a waste of time.

Melville didn't realize that his book was allegorical. Also, too much time is spent on the nuances of whaling. Otherwise, it's worth a read.

Bullshit.

Rather read 50 shades of grey