History YMMV / MobyDick

--->“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw—thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes".

---> "I see my wife and child in thine eye...the far away home I see in that eye!"

* MemeticMutation: “Moby'''’s''' Dick” can be found in certain memes and webcomics, referring to the fact that a whale’s penis can be 8-10 ''feet'' long.

** Starbuck is better known as the name of the coffee franchise, or even the Franchise/BattlestarGalactica character.

** Whaling captains Boomer and Gardiner only make one brief appearance apiece but their characterizations (a {{Foil}} to Ahab who also lost a limb to Moby-Dick and a man suffering from AdultFear) cause both to be quite iconic. Neither of them is absolutely necessary for the story, but it's rare for an adaptation to exclude either of them.

* OneSceneWonder: Father Mapple in the film versions, as played by Creator/OrsonWelles (1956), Creator/GregoryPeck (1998), and Creator/DonaldSutherland (2011).

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture some people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic the crew is. At the time of writing, sperm whales were TheDreaded, believed to be highly aggressive by nature and merely attacking ships without being provoked. The situation shifts, however, with modern obsession with whales and their preservation; as well as the understanding that whales learned what types of ships were likely to hunt them and struck pre-emptively. Today some people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as a self-defense mass murderer.

* WeirdAlEffect:
** More people have heard of Captain Ahab than have heard of the Biblical King Ahab from which he got his name.
*** As Captain Peleg points out early on, Ahab did not choose his name, and he shouldn't think too much about it.
** Starbuck is better known as the name of the coffee franchise, or even the Franchise/BattlestarGalactica character.

** "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!", to much lesser extent.

* SignatureLine: The first one. "Call me Ishmael"

** To modern readers, the three harpooneers can come across as caricatures of Africans (Daggoo), Native Americans (Tashtego) and Polynesians (Queequeg), respectively. However, Melville makes them all sympathetic characters and Ishmael frequently talks about how they're NotSoDifferent from white men. In fact, he deliberately created them to ''defy'' stereotypes, with Tashtego being gloomy and fatalistic while Queequeg is cheerful and down-to-earth.

* CrazyAwesome: Ahab. It is because of his insane obsession with Moby Dick that he created charts accurately mapping the annual movements of the whales, allowing them to follow the herd, kill as they go and fill their hold in record time. His insanity also wins over his crew and makes them all (save for Starbuck) extremely loyal and invested in the hunt for Moby Dick.

* HilariousInHindsight: Chapter 44 says that sperm whale migrations often match [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail the flight of swallows.]]

* HarsherInHindsight: Ishmael doesn't believe whaling is a threat to the whale as a species since unlike shooting buffaloo, whaling was (at the time) dangerous, time consuming, and it wasn't unknown for ships to spend months at sea only to come back empty handed. The book was published in 1851, the first practical harpoon cannon was invented in 1863. He also used the elephant surviving thousands of years of hunting as an example.

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture most people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic adaptations try to make the crew. At the time of writing, sperm whales were TheDreaded, believed to be highly aggressive by nature and merely attacking ships without being provoked. The situation shifts, however, with modern understanding of the high intelligence of whales; sperm whales were not aggressive beasts attacking ships unprovoked, but sapient entities reacting in an entirely reasonable way to the fact that a good number of those big wooden things were killing whales. Today most people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as a justified WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture most people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic adaptations try to make the crew. This is because in modern times with the high intelligence of whales being well known, most people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as an innocent victim just defending himself. However, people with this view fail to realize that sperm whales are very aggressive by nature and have been known to attack ships without being provoked, to the point that readers with this knowledge get a good idea of how he became TheDreaded.

** Due to the sperm whale being very aggressive by nature and as a result known to attack ships without being provoked the question of whether or not Moby Dick defending himself or attacking ships for no reason is left unanswered. As is the question if he has any idea who Ahab even is.

-->'''Ahab:''' (strapped to Moby Dick and stabbing him repeatedly with a harpoon) "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake I ''spit'' my last breath at thee! ''THOU DAMNED WHALE!''"

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture most people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic adaptations try to make the crew. This is because in modern times with the high intelligence of whales being well known, most people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as an innocent victim just defending himself.

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture most people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic adaptations try to make the crew. This is because in modern times with the high intelligence of whales being well known, most people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as an innocent victim just defending himself. However, people with this view fail to realize that sperm whales are very aggressive by nature and have been known to attack ships without being provoked.

* AcceptableTargets: Established albinos as one of them.

** Through most of ''Moby-Dick'', the sperm whale was a monster, the legendary leviathan to be hunted down and killed for its oil and spermaceti. Melville admonished people not to burn sperm-candles or lamp oil recklessly, not because he wished to spare the whales' lives, but because so many human sailors died every year on whaling expeditions. In the modern world, just about every species of whale is endangered, and whaling was one of the main reasons for their dangerously low numbers in the wild; "save the whales" is a rallying cry more people support than oppose and thus people are more likely now to cheer on Moby defending himself. Yet at the time the story was written, whale populations were much larger, and nothing was known of whalesong or other such indicators of cetacean intelligence.
* HarsherInHindsight: Ishmael doesn't believe whaling is a threat to the whale as a species since unlike shooting buffaloo, whaling was (at the time) dangerous, time consuming, and known for voyages coming back empty handed. The book was published in 1851, the first practical harpoon cannon was invented in 1863. He also used the elephant surviving thousands of years of hunting as an example.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Captain Ahab -- {{revenge}}-obsessed madman, a TragicHero, or both?

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments: After Peleg insults Queequeg, Ishmael jumps in to defend him, but Queequeg calmly pulls him back and shows [[ImprobableAimingSkills just how skilled he is with a harpoon.]]

* RootingForTheEmpire: In modern culture most people will be cheering Moby on as he kills everyone, no matter how sympathetic adaptations try to make the crew. This is because in modern times with the high intelligence of whales being well known, most people don't see Moby Dick as a remorseless monster but as an innocent victim just defending himself however people with this view fail to realize that sperm whales are very aggressive by nature and have been known to attack ships without being provoked.

** Starbuck is better known as the coffee franchise, or even the ''Franchise/BattlestarGalactica'' character.

** As Captain Peleg points out early on, Ahab did not choose his name, and he shouldn't think too much about it.