Moby Dick: My White Whale

 White Whale - Something that someone pursues obsessively with little chance of success.

In 1993, when I was teaching English Literature while living in Russia I taught the first chapter of Moby Dick by Herman Melville.  I had never read Moby Dick before and was only provided multiple copies of the first chapter.  The chapter contains probably the best first paragraph of a novel I have ever read.  The first sentence, Call me Ishamael is highly regarded as one of the best opening sentences ever written.  It is not, however, my favorite opening sentence.  That distinction belongs to the first sentence of C.S. Lewis's voyage of the Dawn Treader, "There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.".

I have asked Dave from Dave out Loud to come in from out of  the loud and read the first paragraph for us.

I hope you can see how amazing of a first paragraph this really is.  The entire first chapter made me want to read the entire book.  This is when the troubles began.

What I mean by troubles is that I was in Russia almost 30 years ago and I still haven't finished the book. 

I read quite a lot while I was in Russia, but I never got the opportunity to read Moby Dick in it's entirety while there.  A few years after I returned from Russia I picked up a paperback copy of Moby Dick at this relatively new bookstore called Barnes & Noble.  I think it sat on a shelf for a few more years before I actually began to attempt to read it. 

 Moby Dick is a brilliantly written book but it seems to be a very difficult book to read.  Moby Dick is approximately 209,000 words not the worlds largest novel by any means but it won't ever be confused with short.  The Great Gatsby by comparison is approximately 47,000 words long , To Kill A Mockingbird is just in excess of 100,000,  and the aforementioned Dawn Treader is just shy of 53,000 words.  Add those 3 together and Moby Dick is almost 10,000 words longer.  

Also after the first paragraph the book became much more cumbersome for me to read.

Here is a list I pulled from Quora of 10 reasons why this is a difficult book to read:

1. The book is a long read at 822 pages. This does not make it the longest novel ever written but it's certainly a long swim.
2. The format of the novel is odd. It ranges from traditional story telling to essays on the different species of whales to philosophy.
3. Herman Melville has a big vocabularly. If your preparing for the GRE Moby Dick is good preperation for the vocabularly section of the test.
4. Melville draws from many classics of western civilization. If you have not read the Bible, Shakespeare, or Plato his ideas will go right over your head.
5. Moby Dick was written a couple hundred years ago. The reader may need to do historical research to better understand the lives of sailors in that time period.
6. Moby Dick is not only a story about whale hunting. The whole back drop of the story is whale hunting. Why did they hunt whales? They needed whale oil for their lamps and cooking. This is a story about energy and what lengths we will go to provide society with it. I think this goes over many readers heads.
7. Moby Dick is a dense book. It must be chewed on and thought about. It's meaning and themes don't explain themselves.
8. Moby Dick is about life experiences that many of us can't relate to. Most readers don't understand the terror of the ocean, the hard work of harvesting energy, and the bitter loneliness of being away from friends and family for a long time. Rest assured Moby Dick captures real human experiences.
9. The book contains lots of symbols and metaphors and they don't easily explain themselves.
10. The whole. Once you add all nine of these things together into one book many people may decide Moby Dick is not a voyage worth taking. Rest assured it is. It will grow you as a person and give a perspective on life that is hard to find anywhere else. You will be glad when you finish this whale sized book.

Just a quick note about reason 5.  Moby Dick is not a couple hundred years old.  It is 161 years old and will not be a couple hundred years old until I am 96 years old.  But I concede the point, it is an old book.  

Over the years I have made several attempts to read Moby Dick and have never gotten very far in my attempts.  A couple years ago, I changed my strategy about reading Moby Dick and borrowed an audiocopy of the book on Hoopla from my library and have been listening to it on and off since then.  I did this mostly between April 2020 and April 2021 when I was working overnights at a local grocery store and would listen to the book for 1/2 hour or so before going to bed after my shift.  

Through this method I have gotten farther through it than I ever did reading it.  I got about 40 % through it this way. At some point I stopped reading it thinking I would get back to it eventually and didn't really until this Spring.  

Every year during the summer months, specifically the100 or so day period between Memorial Day and Labor Day I embark on a personal Summer reading program.  I tend to spend more time reading during that time  and try to read at least 10 books during that period secretly hoping to read more like 20 to 25.

This year my only goal is to finish one book and that book of course is Moby Dick.  I have finished 42 chapters and am about 1/3 trough the book.  I  am sure I will read more books than just Moby Dick this summer but I'll be much more satisfied to finish this white whale than if I read 25 other ones and this one still tasked me.