All I know about this book was that Moby-Dick is a whale. So I wasn’t really quite sure what the story was going to be like. Was there a story? Barely!!I don’t mind the occasional tangent about whales: in history, scientific facts, on whaling, etc but seriously most of the book is basically tangential to the story. Hence, there wasn’t much of a story and I felt that Melville was just waffling on and I pretty much got bored. I don’t get how this book got to be a popular?I got bored even at the beginning and then, I got slightly excited with the introduction to Captain Ahab:“…He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as we as ‘mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! Aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! He ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and he ain’t Captain Peleg; HE’S AHAB, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!”It took a long time from above description to the time Ahab actually appeared. And then, Ahab just wasn’t the great man I expected him to be. He’s a broody, obsessive sort of man; focused on his revenge on a whale who took his limb. Dude, get over it! Get a life!Of Moby-Dick himself, we probably only get to see him for about approx. 10% of the book, maybe 20% (absolute) max. I would have expected to see him a lot more seeing that the title is his name! I’m sooo… disappointed.I appreciate the fact that whaling was a most profitable occupation however I really do not need to know all the gory graphic detail of the butchery! A not-so-gory but touching example below:…As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood…Save the Whales!
