So that’s it. Moby Dick is finally finished and it I’m perfectly honest I’m quite relieved; I never thought we’d get here. I feel as if this book has been an all-consuming part of my life for the last few weeks. The fact that I haven’t been dreaming of whales still surprises me. Really this post is just going to by thoughts on the novel as a whole.
Yes the book is full of action, and I love that I really do, but for the main part it felt as though the action got buried beneath the description. I felt a lot of the time like Melville was lecturing me; I kind of wanted to turn round by remind him that he isn’t a high school teacher. In some ways the descriptions helped but at other points in the story it felt like it was suffocating the plot line. It also makes me wonder about Ishmael; if he is this intelligent then why is he on a whaling boat? He could be teaching animal biology somewhere and probably making a lot of money from ridiculously overpriced academic books on the subject. I think added so much in the way of information on whaling was a bit unnecessary.
On saying that I liked the ending of the book; I mean I wish that more characters had survived but as far as Ahab is concerned I didn’t think there was any other way for things to end for him. He kind of deserved his fate, didn’t he? I mean after everything that Ahab has done throughout the book it would have been a disappointing ending if he had of survived. He was the bad guy of the story and the bad guy has to die at the end.
Overall the novel was a good read but it felt like it would have been more enjoyable if it weren’t so bogged down with the details. I didn’t need to know everything that Melville told me and it felt like it was distracting from the story a lot.
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