Moby Dick

Call me Ishmael. With those famous words, a young sailor joins the whaling ship Pequod, only to discover its captain, Ahab, has one purpose: to kill Moby Dick, the giant white whale that took his leg. What begins as a whaling voyage becomes a metaphysical quest. Through storms and doldrums, past cannibals and captains, Ahab drives his crew toward doom while Ishmael meditates on whales, work, democracy, and God. The whale becomes everything humans chase and cannot grasp. Herman Melville's Moby Dick was a failure in its time and is now recognized as the great American novel. Part adventure, part encyclopedia, part cosmic poem, it contains the most famous chase in literature and some of the most beautiful prose in English. Monstrous, funny, and profound, it rewards every reader brave enough to ship out. Read the complete voyage free in this public domain edition. It is demanding, strange, and magnificent beyond measure. A true American epic.