Moby Dick is a classic American novel by Herman Melville about a ship’s crew’s pursuit of a white whale, MoDick, which ultimately leads to their demise. The book explores themes of loneliness and salvation. The character of Captain Ahab has inspired other works, such as the film Jaws. The New England Whaling Museum holds an annual MoDick Marathon reading, which takes 25 hours to complete. Moby, the musician, is Melville’s great-grandson and takes his nickname from the book’s title.
MoDick is the name of the famous “great white whale” in Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel of the same name. The book is widely considered one of the classic works of American literary fiction and deals with general themes including loneliness and the human attempt to achieve salvation.
The first line of the book, “Call me Ishmael,” is well known and widely quoted. Ishmael is the book’s narrator and works as a crew member of the ship, the Pequod, where the story takes place. The ship’s captain, Ahab, has only one leg and appears to be mentally deranged. He is obsessed with chasing a white whale known as MoDick, which turns out to have taken Ahab’s leg. Ishmael soon discovers that the purpose of the ship’s voyage is to capture and kill the giant whale, MoDick, though the crew themselves are killed in their pursuit.
At the end of the book, after much searching, the crew members finally meet MoDick. They battle with the whale for three days, and MoDick finally charges into the ship and destroys the Pequod. Captain Ahab and all other crew are killed; only the narrator, Ishmael, survives the disastrous journey.
Steven Spielberg’s classic film Jaws features a character called Quint heavily based on MoDick’s Captain Ahab. Like Ahab, Quint is obsessed with hunting and killing the animal that took his leg, in this case a great white shark.
In the town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the New England Whaling Museum holds an annual MoDick Marathon reading, in which volunteer readers read the novel aloud for ten minutes each. It takes approximately 25 hours to complete reading the entire novel aloud. Each year, hundreds of Melville fans and many descendants of Melville travel to the event for a chance to read the book. The well-known musician, Moby, is Melville’s great-grandson. His nickname, Moby, comes from the title of his ancestor’s book, MoDick.
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