How to Read Moby-Dick: Themes, Structure and Questions to Ask

What is Moby-Dick, and why is it still read?

Herman Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851, first in London under the title The Whale and about a month later in New York as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. He dedicated it to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville had sailed on a whaler himself, the Acushnet, from 1841, and he drew on accounts of the Essex, a Nantucket whaleship sunk by a sperm whale in 1820.

The book sold poorly, and when Melville died in 1891 he was largely forgotten as a novelist. A revival of interest in the 1920s made Moby-Dick one of the central American novels. Readers now come for Ahab's obsession, the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg, a crew drawn from across the world, and prose that moves from comedy to sermon to soliloquy within a few pages.

It opens with the narrator asking you to call him Ishmael, and he says little about himself beyond a restless need to go to sea. That reticence is part of the design: Ishmael is more a way of seeing than a hero, and by the end he is the only one left to tell the story. If this is part of a larger reading project, our guide to starting the great books suggests where it fits.

How Moby-Dick is structured

After two pieces of front matter, Etymology and a long collection of quotations about whales called Extracts, the novel runs to 135 chapters and a short Epilogue. Chapters range from a single paragraph to long essays, and a handful, such as Midnight, Forecastle, are set out like scenes from a play. The plot falls into four stretches.

The middle stretch is where readers stall. It alternates action with exposition, and the two are linked: chapters on the anatomy of the whale's head sit beside scenes where heads hang from the ship's sides. Nine meetings with other whaleships, called gams, are spaced through it; several bring news of Moby Dick.

The main themes in Moby-Dick

The novel states its themes in scenes and then tests them in essays, so tie each one to the chapters named below.

Key characters in Moby-Dick

The officers form a ladder of responses to Ahab, from Starbuck's conscience to Stubb's jokes to Flask's indifference. Other captains show what Ahab could have been: Boomer of the Samuel Enderby lost an arm to Moby Dick and wants no more of him, and Gardiner of the Rachel begs for help finding his lost son.

• Ishmael: the narrator, a former schoolteacher who goes whaling to cure his gloom, and the sole survivor.
• Captain Ahab: the Pequod's captain, who lost a leg to Moby Dick and stands on a peg made of whale ivory.
• Moby Dick: a huge white sperm whale, famous among whalemen, whose motives the book never settles.
• Starbuck: the Quaker first mate, brave and devout, the only officer who openly opposes the hunt.
• Stubb and Flask: the easygoing second mate and the blunt third mate, each commanding a whaleboat.
• Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo: the harpooneers, from a South Sea island, from Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, and from Africa.
• Fedallah: the mysterious harpooneer Ahab smuggles aboard to lead his private boat crew.
• Pip: the cabin boy whose abandonment at sea leaves him both mad and strangely wise.
• Father Mapple, Peleg and Bildad: the preacher of the Jonah sermon and the Pequod's Quaker owners.

How to read Moby-Dick without stalling

The book rewards a steady pace more than speed. Four or five chapters a day takes about a month, and short chapters make it easy to keep going. If long books fade between sittings, the habits in our guide on remembering what you read will help.

1. 1Read chapters 1–22 at normal speed; they are comic and set up the friendship that pays off in the Epilogue.
2. 2Read The Quarter-Deck (chapter 36) twice or aloud; it is written as drama, and every later scene depends on it.
3. 3In the cetology and whaling chapters, read for Ishmael's attitude rather than the facts; much of his science is outdated, and he even argues that the whale is a fish.
4. 4Keep a gam log: for each ship the Pequod meets, note its captain, any news of Moby Dick and how Ahab responds.
5. 5Track Ahab's moments of hesitation, especially with Pip and in The Symphony, chapter 132.
6. 6Read the three chase chapters and the Epilogue in one sitting.
7. 7Then reread chapter 1 and ask why Ishmael, of all the crew, is the one who survives.

Moby-Dick discussion questions

Pick two or three for a seminar, or turn one into an essay question. The strongest answers connect a plot chapter with an essay chapter.

• Is Ahab a tragic hero, a madman or a tyrant, and does Melville let you choose just one?
• What does Moby Dick mean to Ahab, to Ishmael and to Starbuck, and why does the novel refuse a single answer?
• Why does Ishmael spend so many chapters classifying, measuring and describing whales?
• What do the chapters written as stage drama add that ordinary narration could not?
• Why does Starbuck fail to stop Ahab, even when he stands outside the captain's cabin with a loaded musket?
• How does the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg answer Ahab's isolation?
• What does Pip's madness reveal, and why is Ahab gentle with him alone?
• How do the captains of the Samuel Enderby and the Rachel comment on Ahab?
• Why does Ishmael survive on Queequeg's coffin, and what does that image say about the book?

Choosing an edition of Moby-Dick

The two first editions differ. The London edition, The Whale, was cut in places, partly to remove passages that might offend, and it left out the Epilogue, so some British reviewers wondered how a narrator who seemed to drown could tell the story. Modern editions follow the American text, and scholarly ones, such as the Northwestern-Newberry edition, compare the two.

Avoid abridged versions for study; they usually drop the cetology and whaling chapters, and with them much of what the book is about. Look for an unabridged edition with notes on nautical and whaling terms, a diagram of the ship and a whaleboat, and notes on Melville's many biblical and Shakespearean allusions. If you read a translation, check that it is complete, since some older ones were shortened.