Review of Melville

At long last I managed to finish Moby Dick, so now it is time for its review.

In short, I do not recommend this book unless if you are curious to know every facet of the anatomy of the sperm whale. It seems to me that Melville sandwiched his fascination for whales between a meager 200 pages of plot--making what could have been a quick read into a 724 page monster.

Now, don't get me wrong, the whale anatomy and details of the whaling business were interesting, to a point. But I would be lying if I did not confess that the quantity of those "informative" chapters caused me to lose interest in the book, made it hard to keep track of the plot, and made me lose my appetite and become nauseous during the graphic blubber-processing chapter. I give it 3 stars out of 10.

Turning now to the theological; the beginning of the book had an interesting portion that had very shady and heretical implications. The narrator, Ishmael, has made friends with a "pagan" harpooner named Queequeg. After Ishmael has once observed Queequeg worshipping his idols, he dialogs with himself concerning his own Christian duties in relation the the "pagan".

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do the will of God--that is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do me--that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeq; salaamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.

Yuck! The faulty reasoning makes my skin crawl.


I think I will try to finish Owen's Temptation & Sin before I go on to anything more. Having been spoiled by Victor Hugo and John Steinbeck, I think I need a break from fiction.