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Sailor Ishmael tells the story of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for revenge on the white whale Moby Dick.Tags
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This book review is a novel by Herman Melville. The novel, "Moby Dick", is about Captain Ahab and his crew of whale hunters looking for a white whale. The white whale called "Moby Dick". The story is narrated by Ishmael, a crew member for Captain Ahab, who describes the voyages around the world searching for Moby Dick. Ishmael explains that his captain lost his leg, last ship, and many of his prior crew from his last encounter with Moby Dick. The captain is obsessed with finding Moby Dick and exacting his revenge at all costs. They eventually find Moby Dick and have a three-day battle. The captain loses his life, his ship, and his entire crew except for Ishmael. Ishmael was the lone survivor to tell the tale.
I liked this story because show more it taught me a lot about the life of a whaler. It shows how dangerous whaling was at that time in history. Whaling and life on the sea is very much like the journey to space today. Both are very dangerous for their times and are isolated from everyone else. I rated this book four stars because it was a little hard to understand due to their pirate-like language. I would recommend this book to people who like to read about sea adventures and a classic tale of the problems with revenge. show less
I liked this story because show more it taught me a lot about the life of a whaler. It shows how dangerous whaling was at that time in history. Whaling and life on the sea is very much like the journey to space today. Both are very dangerous for their times and are isolated from everyone else. I rated this book four stars because it was a little hard to understand due to their pirate-like language. I would recommend this book to people who like to read about sea adventures and a classic tale of the problems with revenge. show less
Is a book about Ishmael. He has no money so he left is home for New Bedford then went to Nantucket. He found Spouter Inn. He had to share a room with a harpooner. The harpooner was named Queequeg. They became friends and went to the ship Pequod. They got hired and set sail with Captain Ahab. They have to catch a white whale named Moby Dick. Moby Dick took off Ahab's leg. Later they find Moby Dick and chase it for awhile. In the end Captain Ahab dies by the rope he threw which pulled him into the water.
I kinda liked this book. It was fun to read. The funnest part was the chase. I really liked Queequeg. It was cool when he sold the shrunken heads. Sure this is a kids version but it is still good to read. I also thought it was funny when show more Tashtego fill into the whales blow hole. This is a good book that people should read. Also even though it is a kids version it is good. Also I read it because it was a laying around and I wanted read the famous Moby Dick. show less
I kinda liked this book. It was fun to read. The funnest part was the chase. I really liked Queequeg. It was cool when he sold the shrunken heads. Sure this is a kids version but it is still good to read. I also thought it was funny when show more Tashtego fill into the whales blow hole. This is a good book that people should read. Also even though it is a kids version it is good. Also I read it because it was a laying around and I wanted read the famous Moby Dick. show less
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657+ Works 78,419 Members
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was born into a seemingly secure, prosperous world, a descendant of prominent Dutch and English families long established in New York State. That security vanished when first, the family business failed, and then, two years later, in young Melville's thirteenth year, his father died. Without show more enough money to gain the formal education that professions required, Melville was thrown on his own resources and in 1841 sailed off on a whaling ship bound for the South Seas. His experiences at sea during the next four years were to form in part the basis of his best fiction. Melville's first two books, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), were partly romance and partly autobiographical travel books set in the South Seas. Both were popular successes, particularly Typee, which included a stay among cannibals and a romance with a South Sea maiden. During the next several years, Melville published three more romances that drew upon his experiences at sea: Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both fairly realistic accounts of the sailor's life and depicting the loss of innocence of central characters; and Mardi (1849), which, like the other two books, began as a romance of adventure but turned into an allegorical critique of contemporary American civilization. Moby Dick (1851) also began as an adventure story, based on Melville's experiences aboard the whaling ship. However, in the writing of it inspired in part by conversations with his friend and neighbor Hawthorne and partly by his own irrepressible imagination and reading of Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists Melville turned the book into something so strange that, when it appeared in print, many of his readers and critics were dumbfounded, even outraged. By the mid-1850s, Melville's literary reputation was all but destroyed, and he was obliged to live the rest of his life taking whatever jobs he could find and borrowing money from relatives, who fortunately were always in a position to help him. He continued to write, however, and published some marvelous short fiction pieces Benito Cereno" (1855) and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) are the best. He also published several volumes of poetry, the most important of which was Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), poems of occasionally great power that were written in response to the moral challenge of the Civil War. His posthumously published work, Billy Budd (1924), on which he worked up until the time of his death, became Melville's last significant literary work, a brilliant short novel that movingly describes a young sailor's imprisonment and death. Melville's reputation, however, rests most solidly on his great epic romance, Moby Dick. It is a difficult as well as a brilliant book, and many critics have offered interpretations of its complicated ambiguous symbolism. Darrel Abel briefly summed up Moby Dick as "the story of an attempt to search the unsearchable ways of God," although the book has historical, political, and moral implications as well. Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of September 28, 1891, at age 72. The doctor listed "cardiac dilation" on the death certificate. He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York, along with his wife, Elizabeth Shaw Melville. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Herman Melville has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Is an adaptation of
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Moby Dick [adapted - Great Classics for Children]
- Disambiguation notice
- This work is an abridgment for children. Please do not combine with the full-length novel.
Classifications
- Genres
- Children's Books, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 813.36 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English Middle 19th Century 1830-1861 Melville, Herman 1819–91
- LCC
- PS2384 .M6 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 19th century
- BISAC
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- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 1
- UPCs
- 1
