With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of \u2018Poetry Review\u2019.<\/p>\n
Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab\u2019s quest to avenge the whale that \u2018reaped\u2019 his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.<\/p>\n
But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab\u2019s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.<\/p>\n
Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel\u2019s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education:<\/p>\n
in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his \u2018mighty theme\u2019 \u2013 not only the whale but all things sublime \u2013 Melville breathes in the world\u2019s great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab\u2019s quest to avenge the whale that \u2018reaped\u2019 his leg. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel\u2019s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[69,80,75],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-9229","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-classic-fiction","product_cat-fantasy-and-science-fiction","product_cat-poetry","first","instock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/product\/9229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/product\/9229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10182,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/product\/9229\/revisions\/10182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fproduct_brand&post=9229"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fproduct_cat&post=9229"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacebookhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fproduct_tag&post=9229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}