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"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."
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Now honestly prized as a consummate piece of literature and one of the greatest books through all of time, Moby-Dick was published to unforgiving opinion, and the writer, Herman Melville, was unable to make a proper living. He wrote few novels after this. Retiring from a full time literary life, he wrote poems and some short stories. Only through the 1920s were many qualities of his epic novel fully questioned.
It is the gripping story of a whaling ship trip as seen eerily by the eyes of emotive Ishmael, the narrator, and his pursuit of the white whale. However, the novel frankly concerns itself primarily with many potent issues of 19th century American thought too. The relationship between land and sea epitomize the grave struggle between adventure and domesticity. AhabÍs monomania, as implied in his thrilling pursuit of the mighty whale, thereby graphs a comment on the implicit feelings of crippling disillusionment in 19th century America psyche and on the convincing mythology that the rigorous single-minded pursuit of ideals are vain, wrong and harshly self-destructive.
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