- Hardcover
- Publisher: Book Sales (October 1978)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0890090696
- ISBN-13: 978-0890090695
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (227 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Avec Moby Dick, Melville a donné naissance à un livre-culte et inscrit dans la mémoire des hommes un nouveau mythe : celui de la baleine blanche. Fort de son expérience de marin, qui a nourri ses romans précédents et lui a assuré le succès, l'écrivain américain, alors en pleine maturité, raconte la folle quête du capitaine Achab et sa dernière rencontre avec le grand cachalot. Véritable encyclopédie de la mer, nouvelle Bible aux accents prophétiques, parabole chargée de thèmes universels, Moby Dick n'en reste pas moins construit avec une savante maîtrise, maintenant un suspense lent, qui s'accélère peu à peu jusqu'à l'apocalypse finale. L'écriture de Melville, infiniment libre et audacieuse, tour à tour balancée, puis hachée au rythme des houles, des vents et des passions humaines, est d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Il faut remonter à Shakespeare pour trouver l'exemple d'une langue aussi inventive, d'une poésie aussi grandiose. --Scarbo
From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-Opening with the classic line, "Call me Ishmael," the narrator's New England accent adds a touch of authenticity to this sometimes melodramatic presentation. The St. Charles Players do a credible job on the major roles, but some of the group responses, such as "Aye, aye Captain," sound more comic than serious. This adaptation retains a good measure of Melville's dialogue and key passages which afford listeners a vivid connection with the lengthy novel. Background music and appropriate sound effects enhance the telling of the story about Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the malevolent white whale. The cassettes are clearly marked, and running times are noted on each side of the tapes. Announcements at the beginning of each side and a subtle chime signal at the end make it easy to follow the story, but a stereo player must be used to hear some dialogue. The lightweight cardboard package is inadequate for circulation. Done in a radio theatre format, the recording does a nice job of introducing the deeper themes of the book and covering the major events. For school libraries that support an American literature curriculum, this recording offers a different interpretation of an enduring classic.
Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library. Rocky Hill, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library. Rocky Hill, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
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First Sentence
CALL me Ishmael. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
CALL me Ishmael. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Moby Dick,
By
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This review is from: Moby Dick: Or, The Whale (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is interesting and boring at the same time (I find that hard to believe as well). The beginning starts of fresh, right away the author catches the readers interests, but as you keep on reading you begin to lose interest because the Author brings out filler after filler which frustrates the reader and makes you wonder when is he going to get to the point. Since your so far ahead from where you started to read? you don't want to stop and you start to have that feeling of once you start someting you have to finish it. As the book goes down forward (around page 300) it gets interesting once again.This book was simulatenously good and bad, you have to have a lot of patience for this book, if you don't you'll just drop it and pick up something new. The only reason I picked up this book was because it's a classic, and the only reason I tortured myself into reading this book any further was because... it was a classic. 3/5 because it was somewhat good. I suggest you just watch the movie and forget about reading the book, it's almost the same thing.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Moby Dick,
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This review is from: Moby-Dick (Mass Market Paperback)
The print is much too small, making reading rather difficult. Also, the paper is very light, making page-turning a bit delicate.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't get bogged down in the middle. The end is worth it.,
By
This review is from: Moby-Dick (Mass Market Paperback)
The thing I always tell people about Moby Dick is that the beginning is lighthearted fun, the ending is amazing, and the middle is (to be blunt) quite dull. I think most people who make it to the end love the book, but getting there is a chore because Melville spends a great deal of time either talking about minutia of the whaling trade, or going off onto tangents almost in a stream of consciousness fashion that seem to have very little to do with the narrative (he devotes an entire chapter to telling why the color white is frightening, and another to listing characters from legend whom he identifies as whalers (Perseus I can see, but St. George?)). The language is gloriously poetic in places, but other times it rambles almost aimlessly and feels very convoluted and self-indulgent, even by 19th century standards. (Yes, I know these are qualities that the book's devotees hold dear, but they're also the reason that so many people never finish the thing. Might as well be honest about it.)At the end, it's extremely disturbing getting into Ahab's head and understanding what makes him tick-disturbing because it's present in all of us, an instrinsic part of the human condition: his rage at not being God. Ahab is pride incarnate, with all the hatred that comes with it. (The story of Jonah, sermonized in the beginning, is ultimately one of the need for humility before God, with the whale as God's agent. And it's important that Jonah's sin is not merely disobedience but a refusal to go on a mission of mercy.). I felt unsettled for a long time after I read this, because it demonstrates what a short jump it is between a classically Satanic villain (a being of total pride and hate waging an all-destructive and ultimately futile war on God, and luring all others to follow him to damnation) to the modern concept of the existentialist hero, fighting bravely against hopeless odds. Seen through his own eyes, Ahab is genuinely heroic--and then the reader has to step back and realize that on the contrary, hatred has all but consumed Ahab's soul, leaving the Rachel without help and leading his crew to death for his own pride's sake. If to understand is to approve, the reader who now understands Ahab is left asking, "Good God, what kind of person am I?" Today we tend to view pride as a virtue rather than a vice; what does that make any of us? Needless to say, there's a lot there. It wasn't until years after I'd read the book that I'd sorted it out enough in my mind to feel that I finally "got it," and I'm still in the process of getting it. Everything in Moby Dick is a symbol, and I suppose that no two people completely agree on what the symbols represent (Melville surely wanted a degree of ambiguity, anyway). Here are my own opinions on what it all means: (spoiler warning) The whale represents God. Starbuck is Christendom. Even though Queequeg is one of the pagans, it is through his seeming death and resurrection midway through the novel that Ishmael lives--because of the coffin. And Starbuck, innocent of any crime, goes down with the ship anyway (giving Ahab pause, just before his own death, to essentially stop and say in horror, "What have I done?") I'm not sure what Pip represents. If you're buying a paperback, I'd recommend the Tor edition, (ISBN 0812543076) just because I think it's got a very nice cover painting, something publishers often don't bother with when reprinting a "classic."
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