"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville is one of the most famous and most intimidating novels ever written. Still frequently assigned reading in school, "Moby-Dick" is a polarizing novel for many reasons: Its huge vocabulary, usually requiring at least a few trips to your dictionary; its obsession with 19th-century whaling life, technology, and jargon; the variety of literary techniques used by Melville; and its thematic complexity. Many people have read (or attempted to read) the novel only to conclude that it’s overrated, and for a long time most people agreed —far from an immediate success, the novel failed upon publication and it was decades before Melville’s novel was accepted as a classic of American literature.And yet, even people who have not read the book are familiar with its basic plot, major symbols, and specific lines— just about everyone knows the famous opening line “Call me Ishmael.” The symbol of the white whale and the sense of Captain Ahab as an obsessed authority figure wil...
