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
Moby-Dick in the book in which a mysterious, undecipherable painting in a bar is gradually revealed to depict a whale. American author Ralph Ellison wrote a tribute to the book in the prologue of his 1952 novel "Invisible Man", where the narrator remembers a moment of truth under the influence of marijuana, and evocates a church service: "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness.' And the congregation answers: 'That blackness is most black, brother, most black ...'" This scene, Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad observes, "reprises a moment in the second chapter of "Moby-Dick"", where Ishmael wanders