Ishmael The narrator of the novel is a keen observer, a young man with an open mind who is wary of Ahab but, like most of the crew, swept away by the captain’s charisma. Ahab The “grand, ungodly, god-like man” is a deeply complex figure, one of the most controversial […]
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In his “Introduction” to the 1998 Oxford World’s Classic edition of Moby-Dick, Tony Tanner suggests that the novel could only have been written in America and only in the mid-nineteenth century. The country then “seemed to stand at a new height, or new edge, of triumphant dominion and expansionary confidence […]
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“Call me Ishmael,” the narrator begins, in one of the most recognizable opening lines in American literature. This observant young man from Manhattan has been to sea four times in the merchant service but yearns for a whaling adventure. On a cold, gloomy night in December, he arrives at the […]
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