MOBY DICK by HERMAN MELVILLE

MOBY DICK

                                                    BY HERMAN MELVILLE

The Author of Moby Dick is recognised today as one of America’s greatest writers. He wrote more than ten major novels, based on experiences that he had gone through himself. Some of his adventures in real life were more exciting than the ones he describe in his novels, but none was as strange and thrilling as the story he tells in Moby Dick.

Melville was born in 1819 in New York City. His parents, like many other Americans, were of mixed nationality, being partly English and partly Dutch.

                                       About The Book

Moby Dick is a book with several layers of meaning and can be read at different levels. At one level, it is an exciting tale of adventure. There are many other well known stories of adventures at sea, but what makes Moby Dick special is the fact that it provides a rare glimpse into a particular kind of life____ life on a whaling-ship, or whaler, which Melville knew at first hand.

This is the story of Captain Ahab, the captain of a whaling-ship, the Pequod, and his unending battle against a white whale, to which sailors had given the name Moby Dick. Because of its unusual color and its great size, Moby Dick had become a valued prize for all  whale-hunters. But in case of Captain Ahab, there was an element of personal enmity and a desire for revenge as well. In an earlier meeting with Moby Dick, Ahab had lost one of his legs, which was bitten off by the whale. There- after, he had only one goal in life-to kill the white whale. After months of pursuit through the oceans, the man and the whale came together at last; the battle is resumed.

The story is narrated by a sailor called Ishmale, who becomes a witness to the battle between Ahab and Moby Dick.