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During the fall my son got really into whales, so I felt I had to read the book about the most famous whale of them all and see if it was something I could read to him. I quickly came to the conclusion that Moby Dick is not a suitable story for a 5 year old.
Though I did know the basic plot line, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I read the book on my ebook reader so I even completely misjudged the length of the book, thinking that it would be somewhere around 300 pages or so. Turns out it's about twice that.
Another misconception I had was that it was just an adventure novel about the hunt for a ferocious white whale. It was that, but it was also so much more. The book is so littered with tangential stories and remarks that the main story feels like a side quest. Melville really wants you as a reader to understand the whaling trade and the practicalities of it. For instance how you dispose of a whale larger than your ship when you're at sea. I found a [documentary from the Nantucket Whaling Museum] which explains much of what is mentioned in the book.
But it's not only whaling. Moby Dick also contains detailed descriptions of the whale anatomy, mind and behavior. Melville even talks about the whales in the fossil record, which I find very fascinating since Darwin's Origin of Species was first published 8 years later. Of course, Melville doesn't mention evolution or anything, but it's interesting to get a glimpse of how people at the time thought about fossils and, as he calls it, ante-diluvian times.
Overall I highly recommend reading the book, there are so many levels to it and I feel I only scratched the surface. I look forward to re-reading it in a decade or so or whenever my son decides to read it himself.
documentary from the Nantucket Whaling Museum
イェンス - 2022-01-14