Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
by Hermann Melville
A novel.
You know, if there is one issue with Moby Dick; it’s the use of the word ‘spermaceti’. I just don’t like it. The dictionary describes the word as, “A waxy solid obtained from the oil of cetaceans and especially from a closed cavity in the heads of sperm whales and used especially formerly in ointments, cosmetics, and candles”. That may well be, but I can’t help thinking of… well, you know what I’m thinking of.
The other issue is that there is a character in the book named after Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, which seems a significant oversight, considering that the book is allegedly set in the mid 1800s.
Things start well enough; the opening line, “Call me Ishmael” has a pleasant and suggestive ring to it. However, from that point on the story descends into a 635-page hell ride of maritime pomposity as we follow the awful Captain Ahab on his reckless, self-absorbed odyssey to slaughter a whale that had to audacity to fight back by chewing off Ahab’s leg in a previous encounter.
Described as, “Man’s search for meaning in a world of deceptive appearances and fatal delusions” this is in fact a tale of objectionable people doing objectionable things who’s only saving grace is that we know they’re all going to die. You can read into the moral symbolism and existential suggestiveness all you like, but Ahab and his crew of miscreants are a snapshot of ignorant pig-headedness that flaunts with a God complex and defies logic at every turn. Stephen Fry would turn in his grave… if he were dead.
Ishmael, who we had high hopes for when he introduced himself, turns out to be another brainless moron who follows Ahab’s dislodged ambitions with his own equally unenlightened thinking, “Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine”. At one stage, Ishmael compares two decapitated whale heads in a philosophical way –
What a prick!
It’s like an episode of Succession; a dragged-out drama with a crew of tiresome nincompoops motivated by a reality that the rest of us don’t want to comprehend.
Consider if you will, a sequel which tells the story from the perspective of the whale.
Chapter One – Call me Moby. I’m here, minding my own business.
Chapter Two – Stop being such a dick and trying to kill me.
Chapter Three – That hurt, but then again, you and your ship of fools are all dead. Hah!
The End.