Moby Dick: The Whale - Tapa blanda

Melville Herman (1819-1891) was an American novelist and poet, born in New York. He left school after the failure and the death of his father’s business in 1832 and was largely autodidact. Devouring Shakespeare, he was a lot inspired by his style. He published Moby-Dick or The Whale in Britain, in 1851, and later in New York. The work is an epic sea story and nowadays it is one of the great American novels. The opening line “call me Ishmael” is one of the most famous and recognizable opening line in western literature. Then he narrates the voyage of the whale ship, the Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab who wants to take his revenge over Moby-Dick a ferocious, enormous white whale, which previously destroyed Ahab’s ship and severed his leg at the knee. Both Ahab and Ishmael seek knowledge, but while Ishmael learns love and humanity, monomaniacal Ahab pursues a demonic God behind the unreasoning mask of the symbolic whale.