Moby-Dick Moby-Dick Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship "Pequod", for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, the work's genre classifications range from late Romantic to early Symbolist. "Moby-Dick" was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as
Cetology of Moby-Dick Cetology of Moby-Dick The cetology of Moby-Dick is Ishmael's zoological classification of whales. Although a work of fiction, Melville included sequences of chapters concerned largely with a pseudo-objective discussion of the properties of whales. The observations, based on a list of sources in addition to Melville's own experiences in whaling in the 1840s, include observations of various species from the order of "Cetacea". These chapters are the most likely to be omitted in abridged versions of the novel. Ishmael's observations are not a complete scientific study, even by standards of the day. Nevertheless, because of the general lack of knowledge