I was so very fascinated to read this one. I read the abridged version when I was a kid, and now it was time to go unabridged. But then I realised, I didn’t like it. May be when I was a kid, the whale fascinated me, but now I analyzed the text more. And I saw how much of religion there is in the book. Believe me, I am not against God. But this book was an overdose. For all I saw, Moby Dick has been shown as a symbol of God in this book.
An entire chapter, ‘The Whiteness of the Whale,’ discusses the coloring of the beast by comparing it to the whiteness of other objects. There is discussion about whiteness representing beauty, royalty, innocence and holiness. Now, here I see racism. Then there is Ahab talking about a power that he cannot tame, just the way God is a force that is out of reach.
So any overdose of an element in a book kind of gets boring. Although the whale killing chapters are pretty adventurous, and I had fun reading them!
The Bora Booktique 