Call Me Ishmael

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John Bryant points out that as the novel progresses the central character is "flip-flopping from Ishmael to Ahab. Buell sees a double quest in the book: Ahab's is to hunt Moby Dick, Ishmael's is "to understand what to make of both whale and hunt". The catalyst for this transformation, which made the difference between another thrilling yarn in the mould of Omoo or Redburn, and one of the greatest – if not the greatest – novels ever written, was font size. The point is not that Ahab would discover the whale as an object, but that he would perceive it as a symbol of his making. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

In the case of Moby-Dick, Melville had taken almost a year longer than promised, and could not rely on Harpers to prepare the proofs as they had done for the earlier books.

Ishmael, in the early chapters, is simply the narrator, just as the narrators in Melville's earlier sea adventures had been, but in later chapters becomes a mystical stage manager who is central to the tragedy. In 1852, some remaining sheets were bound in a cheaper casing, and in 1853, enough sheets were still left to issue a cheap edition in one volume. Cheever's The Whale and His Captors (1850), was used for two episodes in Moby-Dick but probably appeared too late in the writing of the novel to be of much more use.

Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or " gams", with other ships: Ahab hails the Goney (Albatross) to ask whether they have seen the White Whale, but the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. Vincent, in his study The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick, "warned against forgetting the narrator", that is, assuming that Ishmael was merely describing what he saw. The superabundant vocabulary can be broken down into strategies used individually and in combination. The earliest American review, in the Boston Post for November 20, quoted the London Athenaeum 's scornful review, not realizing that some of the criticism of The Whale did not pertain to Moby-Dick.Henceforth, he uses his coffin for a spare seachest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod 's life buoy. In addition to his own experience on the whaling ship Acushnet, two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale. These similes, with their astonishing "imaginative abundance," not only create dramatic movement, Matthiessen observes: "They are no less notable for breadth; and the more sustained among them, for an heroic dignity. In addition to cetological works, Melville also consulted scattered literary works that mention or discuss whales, as the opening "Extracts" section of the novel demonstrates.

In October Harper's New Monthly Magazine printed chapter 54, "The Town-Ho's Story", with a footnote saying: "From The Whale. If you have ever read the book of the film “Jaws”, you will find this last section very reminiscent indeed of that modern classic. In the chapter "The Doubloon," Ishmael reports how each spectator sees his own personality reflected in the coin, but does not look at it himself.

Earlier critics charged that Melville did not pay a great deal of attention to point of view, "and of course this is true" in Henry James's sense of the technique, yet Ishmael-narrator's "struggle" with the shaping of his narrative, "under constant discussion, is itself one of the major themes of the book. Accordingly, the dedication to Hawthorne in the American edition—"this book is inscribed to"—became "these volumes are inscribed to" in the British.

Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity.Vincent, the general influence of this source is to supply the arrangement of whaling data in chapter groupings. John Bull praised the author for making literature out of unlikely and even unattractive matter, and the Morning Post found that delight far outstripped the improbable character of events.