Wordsworth Collectors - Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab’s quest to avenge the whale that ‘reaped’ his leg. The novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic but it’s equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing.