moby-dick · melville

Herman Melville's 1851 novel sends the narrator Ishmael to sea on the Pequod under Captain Ahab, whose hunt for the white whale that took his leg becomes a war on the universe. Encyclopaedic, comic and tragic by turns, it is about obsession, the limits of knowledge, the malice or blankness of nature, and the fellowship of men who work.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale (Penguin Books, 2003). Read in full over two sessions, Junior Spring at Torrey Honors.