Moby-Dick

What it is about

Herman Melville sends Ishmael aboard the Pequod, where Captain Ahab turns a commercial whaling voyage into a total pursuit of the white whale that maimed him. The novel continually exceeds its adventure plot: drama, sermon, natural history, workplace observation, comedy, and metaphysical speculation accumulate into an inquiry about obsession, authority, labor, race, knowledge, and a natural world that refuses to become a single readable symbol. I keep it on this shelf because I want to let another life disturb my own habits of thought.

Why I keep it

The whale. Kept for the sentences, and for finishing it.

Key ideas

Beside it on the shelf · Literature & Fiction