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 conception of the book". A second type of objection is based upon Melville's intellectual development. Bezanson is not convinced that before he met Hawthorne, "Melville was "not" ready for the kind of book "Moby-Dick" became", because in his letters from the time Melville denounces his last two "straight narratives, "Redburn" and "White-Jacket", as two books written just for the money, and he firmly stood by "Mardi" as the kind of book he believed in. His language is already "richly steeped in 17th-century mannerisms", characteristics of "Moby-Dick". A third type calls upon the literary nature of passages used as evidence. According