Most interesting review of Moby Dick, ever!

The Hollywood blockbuster In the Heart of the Sea failed to make waves, as it were, this past holiday season, but Library of America fans have reason to be grateful for it nonetheless. The film’s release in December prompted late-night TV host Stephen Colbert to invite LOA Trustee Andrew Delbanco onto his program to explain how the real-life events chronicled In the Heart of the Sea helped inspire Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Source from LOA

I have not seen the film In the Heart of the Sea yet, but I have read Moby Dick. I would not call myself a huge fan of the novel, for there are lots of chapters that describe ships and whaling in such detail it gets kinda boring, but the allegory and metaphors Melville implements throughout the novel are some of the most accurate descriptions of the American spirit and its view of the world. Ishmael, the rugged individual driven by a form of manifest destiny, goes to the sea because

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.

Moby Dick, Chapter 1

So with that in mind, a great adventure begins for the protagonist Ishmael.

Many critics have found many meanings in Moby Dick, but I would like to share an interesting one from Camille Paglia,

Moby-Dick rejects male sexual destiny, which Romanticism portrays as servitude to female power. Melville declares: I shall revive the chthonian but in masculine form. The novel subtly hermaphroditizes the great whale without genuinely diluting his masculinity... Like Pym, the book honors a subterranean or submarine deity, a mute, amoral counter conception to talkative, lawgiving Jehovah.

Ms. Paglia and Mr. Delbanco are just a few of the many scholars that have offered a deeper insight into this great American novel, and if I have sparked an interest in anyone who might now be thinking of reading this epic might I suggest Moby-Dick (A Norton Critical edition) for it has great references as footnotes to help explain a lot of the obscure or dated references.

Last, I invite anyone's opinion on what they think the book might mean.

Keep reading, and keep thinking
to all!

a reply to: hubrisinxs
I've never seen a book review quite like that. It was funny watching him talk through his terror.

I think it's sort of sad that it seems all we are capable of these days is reading sex into everything as its grand underlying theme.

I'm not sure that says anything good or noble about our culture when we view everything, including some of the greatest works of the past, through the prism of our own privates and which privates they are most compatible with and whether or not our brains think they are compatible with the gender our bodies express.