Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by the American writer Herman Melville, published in 1851. Hailed as a classic of world maritime literature, it has been likened by some critics to "the American Hamlet." The novel is narrated in the first person by a sailor, Ishmael, who drifts to Nantucket and befriends Queequeg, a kind-hearted harpooneer from a South Sea island. Together they board the whaling ship Pequod. Captain Ahab, who lost a leg in a previous voyage to a white whale named Moby Dick, swears vengeance and nails a gold coin to the mast as a bounty for the whale's head, driving the entire crew across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans until they have roamed nearly the whole world. The first mate, Starbuck, repeatedly urges Ahab to turn back, but cannot shake his obsession. The book intersperses extensive digressions and reflections on cetology, the craft of whaling, and whale oil, fusing high-seas adventure, religious allegory, philosophical fable, and dramatic soliloquy into one; the whiteness of the whale is at once purity and a terrifying void. After a three-day chase, Ahab's harpoon finally strikes the whale, but the ship is smashed to pieces, and Ahab, caught in a whaling line, is dragged into the sea. Only Ishmael survives, floating on a coffin, to tell the tale. The People's Literature Publishing House edition, translated by Cheng Shi, uses the renderings "Pequod," "Ahab," and "Moby Dick."