Herman Melville

Moby Dick: or The Whale

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Moby Dick famously begins with the narratorial invocation "Call me Ishmael." The narrator, like his biblical counterpart, is an outcast. Ishmael, who turns to the sea for meaning, relays to the audience the final voyage of the Pequod, a whaling vessel. Amid a story of tribulation, beauty, and madness, the reader is introduced to a number of characters, many of whom have names with religious resonance.The ship's captain is Ahab, who Ishmael and his friend Queequeg soon learn is losing his mind. Starbuck, Ahab's first-mate, recognizes this problem too, and is the only one throughout the novel to voice his disapproval of Ahab's increasingly obsessive behavior. This nature of Ahab's obsession is first revealed to Ishmael and Queequeg after the Pequod's owners, Peleg and Bildad, explain to them that Ahab is still recovering from an encounter with a large whale that resulted in the loss of his leg. That whale's name is Moby Dick.The Pequod sets sail, and the crew is soon informed that this journey will be unlike their other whaling missions: this time, despite the reluctance of Starbuck, Ahab intends to hunt and kill the beastly Moby Dick no matter the cost.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Seven Books
• Seitenzahl: 683
• Altersempfehlung: ab 9 Jahre
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 37mm x 155mm x 235mm
• Gewicht: 1019g
• ISBN-13: 9789403814797
• Artikelnr.: 74781458

Autorenporträt

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick would eventually be considered one of the great American novels.Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on the merchant ship St. Lawrence and then, in 1841, on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands.