I thought our book club picking 'Moby-Dick' was a huge mistake

We voted on it last month and I was sure it would be boring and impossible to get through. But our meeting yesterday turned into a wild two-hour fight about whether Ahab is a hero or just crazy. My friend Mark yelled, 'He's a captain obsessed with a fish, that's not deep, it's silly!' and it got really funny. Has your club ever had a book that started a totally unexpected argument?

2 comments

2 Comments

cooper.reese1d ago

Actually, it's a whale, not a fish. That's a big part of the whole thing. Ahab's chasing a mammal, which is way more complex and symbolic. Calling it just a fish kind of misses Melville's point about nature and obsession. Our group got hung up on that detail for a solid twenty minutes once. It changes how you see the whole chase.

ivan401d ago

Oh man, that's a good point. But what gets me is that Ahab probably knows it's a mammal and just calls it a fish anyway. Like, he's so set on his revenge that he strips the whale of its real nature, makes it into just a thing to hunt. That's the real obsession, right? He won't even see it for what it truly is.