Melville wrote Moby-Dick during a period when Emerson, Thoreau, and others were developing a Transcendentalist philosophy and extolling the spiritual …

In “Stubb’s Supper,” Stubb instructs “Fleece,” the ship’s aged black cook, to preach to the sharks feasting noisily on the …

One contemporary reviewer complained that Moby-Dick was an “intellectual chowder of romance, philosophy, natural history, fine writing, good feeling, bad …

Moby-Dick alternates between precise, often matter-of-fact descriptions of whaling and the extravagant, almost mythic actions of Ahab and his crew. …

There are no women in Moby-Dick. Whaling was of course a strictly male enterprise, but what consequences may be said …

Early in the voyage, Ahab tells Starbuck: “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man. I’d strike the sun if it …

In “The Try Works,” Ishmael quotes Solomon’s statement that “the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall …

Queequeg is one of the most intriguing characters in Moby-Dick and figures prominently in the novel’s early chapters. Ishmael describes …

Many readers have noted the pervasive influence of Shakespeare on Melville. Of Shakespeare’s great tragic heroes—Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello—whom does …

Melville wrote Moby-Dick in 1850, a time when many were predicting that America would fight a bloody civil war over …