->''Call me Ishmael.''

Described by many as the greatest American novel, ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'', by HermanMelville, is either a story about [[AnimalNemesis the hunt of a dangerous whale by a madman]] that [[ShownTheirWork shows Melville's work]], or [[AuthorFilibuster an encyclopedia on whaling and cetology]] with a FramingDevice. You choose.

Either way, the plot follows a man that, infatuated with the sea (apparently, it's a periodical thing), decides to go aboard a whaling ship to try out how whaling feels. He and his [[NobleSavage newly-met best friend Queequeg]] go upon the ''Pequod'' under the command of the [[{{Determinator}} monomaniac Captain Ahab]], and eventually get in the middle of his maniac hunt for Moby Dick, the eponymous "White Whale" that ate his leg. Tragedy ensues.

''Moby-Dick'' is [[RuleOfSymbolism full of symbolism]], [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory and much more has been added by later commentators]]. Common meanings for the whale, for instance, are: nature, fate, the ocean's fury itself, [[DaveBarry Ireland]] and {{God}} (as an [[SevenBasicConflicts invincible opponent]] who is [[ItWasHisSled never actually overcome]] at any point in the story).

This book is part of the Hollywoodian SmallReferencePools. Despite any real-life literary merits, it is convenient shorthand for "huge boring {{doorstopper}} assigned for reading by high-school teachers" in any given kids series. Whether this also implicitly states that execs think that [[ViewersAreMorons Kids Are Morons]] is debatable.

''Film/MobyDick'' has been adapted to screen several times, the most famous version being with GregoryPeck as Ahab. PatrickStewart was inspired to play the role following an allegorical comparison to Ahab in [[Film/StarTrekFirstContact one of his movies]]. A concept album based on Moby Dick called ''Leviathan'' was also made by prog-metal band {{Mastodon}}. Also a common source of {{Homage}} or WholePlotReference stories, which are [[MobySchtick a trope of their own]].
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!!''Moby-Dick'' provides examples of:

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* AcheyScars: Captain Ahab's lost leg, arguably.
* AnArmAndALeg: The source of Ahab's angst.
* AnimalNemesis: It's practically the textbook for this trope.
** Or its subversion, in that Ahab's rage has since become stock metaphor for revenge-seeking rage that defies merely human attempts to control or stop it.
* AnnoyingArrows: Moby Dick's hide is covered in leftover harpoons from failed attempts to bag him.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking:
--> ''"He's killed himself," she cried. "It's unfort'nate stiggs done over again - there goes another counterpane - god pity his poor mother! - it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where's that girl? - there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with - "no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;" - might as well kill both birds at once."''
* AuthorFilibuster: Though he had reservations about killing whales ("So remorseless a havoc"), Melville had high regard for the brave whalers. In his generation, they were equivalent to cowboys and astronauts.
* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:Queequeg's coffin.]]
* CloudCuckooLander: Stubb comes across as one at times, to Starbuck's dislike.
* CrazySane: Captain Ahab is a pretty competent TheCaptain, and seems perfectly normal until he talks about his AnimalNemesis. Pip GoMadFromTheRevelation when he drowned twice and becomes a TalkativeLoon with very interesting conversation. After a chapter tell us the Perth {{TheBlacksmith}}’s tragic life, Ahab himself asks why Perth averts this trope:
--> ''Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?''
* {{Determinator}}: Captain Ahab. And ''not'' in a good way.
** '''The''' TropeCodifier of all self-destructive forms. Being accused of being Captain Ahab means that unless a character changes their chosen course, and ''quickly'', they ''are'' going to destroy themselves... and probably [[TakingYouWithMe take everyone under their command with them]].
* {{Doorstopper}}: It's over 15 chapters before for Ishmael even ''gets on the ship.''
* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The crew of the ''Pequod'' once gets to spot a giant squid, and find it even scarier than Moby Dick himself.
* FamousLastWords: From Ahab himself.
--> '''Ahab:''' From hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake. I spit my last breath at thee!!!
* FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator: Ishmael tells the story, and at first appears to be the main character, but as the story goes on he becomes more and more peripheral to the story to the point that he almost disappears while Captain Ahab and the eponymous whale take center stage as the main characters.
* FoodPorn: Chapter 15 is about eating... chowder.
** But will they have clam chowder, or cod chowder? [[spoiler: [[TakeAThirdOption or maybe BOTH]]?]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Chapter 40, "The Line".
* FreudianTrio: Ahab as Ego; Starbuck as Superego; Stubb as Id.
* FunetikAksent: Fleece's form of speech.
* FunWithForeignLanguages: Stubb's conversation with the captain of the ''Rosebud''.
* GentleGiant: Queequeg. He's a brawny cannibal prince from the South Sea islands who's covered in tribal tattoos, has his teeth filed to look like fangs, and is deadly accurate with his harpoon ([[{{Badass}} which doubles as a razor for shaving]]). So what's his favorite pastime besides peddling shrunken heads in the street? Snuggling up with his best buddy Ishmael. [[CutenessOverload D'awwwwwwww.]]
** Arguably, Daggoo as well. Stubb can fit on his shoulders, and the man's not exactly a featherweight (that would be Flask).
* GiantSquid: They encountered one:
-->''Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.''
-->''As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed -- "Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"''
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: nearly drowning twice as a result of his own cowardice and stupidity does ''wonders'' for Pip's sanity. The poor kid frequently rants and chastises himself. Ahab sees him as a kindred spirit, probably because Pip is the only person on the ship as mad as he is.
* HaveAGayOldTime: A book about the hunt of a ''sperm'' whale name Moby ''Dick''. Also, "The Town-Ho's Story" has nothing to do with TheOldestProfession.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Captain Ahab seeks to kill a whale that acted out of instinct.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship is either this or HoYay.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Ahab is dragged underwater and killed after the rope attached to his harpoon wraps around his neck.]]
* IgnoredEpiphany: Ahab briefly reconsiders killing Moby Dick. Briefly.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Queequeg manages to harpoon an oil slick.
* TheInsomniac: Ahab is Type B, forgoing sleep for as long as possible to stay focused on his mission.
--> '''Ahab:''' ''Sleep? That bed is a coffin and those are winding sheets. I do not sleep, I die.''
* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Ahab]] drowns when he is pulled underwater by Moby Dick.
* KillEmAll: Everyone except [[spoiler:Ishmael. Well, except Ishmael and [[ItWasHisSled his sled...]]]]
* LightIsNotGood: Discussed, as in the "paradox" of the creepiness of [[EvilAlbino albinos]] in spite of the positive symbolism of white. It should be noted that the whale is not an albino however, he's merely white because he's covered in scars.
* LouisCypher: Fedallah, possibly. Stubb certainly thinks so.
* LudicrousPrecision: The question of whether the whale's spout is water or vapour has lasted from the beginning of history down to "this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851)"
* TheManWithNoName: Ishmael, if one interprets "Call me Ishmael" to imply that this is ''not'' his true name.
* ManlyMenCanHunt
* MediumBlending: Owing to the obvious Shakespearean influence on the novel, some of the chapters are written as a play script.
* TheMutiny: In Chapter 54, "The Town-Ho's Story".
* NoManOfWomanBorn: Courtesy of Fedallah.
* NoNameGiven: An intriguing variation: Ishmael does give a name at the beginning of the book, but only instructs the reader to "Call me Ishmael", as opposed to saying "My name is Ishmael." This is often cited as strong evidence that Ishmael is an unreliable narrator. If you can't even be sure that he told the truth about his name, then you can't be sure that he told the truth about anything.
* NoodleIncident: "That deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa."
* NotWhatISignedOnFor: Starbuck is on the ''Pequod'' to hunt whales, not assist his captain in his mad obsession. He certainly thinks this, and in some adaptations voices this very phrase. Only his [[HonorBeforeReason sense of duty]] keeps him from mutinying.
* OnlySaneMan: Starbuck.
* PetTheDog: Ahab and Pip in Chapter 125, "The Log and Line".
* PlagueOfGoodFortune: A subtle example of type 4: Once Ahab has decided to destroy Moby Dick, a lot of good things (for a superior spirit, of course) happened to him: He discovers the beauty of nature, he appreciates the loyalty of his crew, he rediscovers love and charity again when he befriends Pip, Starbuck’s reminds him of his wife and son, the captain of the Rachel begs him to save his son… It’s like the whole universe conspires to save Ahab from his self imposed doom, to convince to abandon his philosophy of RageAgainstTheHeavens … he only can blame himself.
* PowerBornOfMadness: "If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object."--Chapter 33.
* RageAgainstTheHeavens: Ahab. The author directly states that Ahab has come to project all of the evil in the world onto Moby Dick, as if the white whale is the living personification of evil and bad fortune. Ahab himself acknowledges that he hates the whale that crippled him not so much as a mere whale, but for what it represents: bad luck, fate, the harsh nature of a post-Eden fallen world, whatever you want to call it. Ahab's anger, as the author put it, is the sum total of all of the anger of humanity going back to when Adam was kicked out of the Garden of Eden, anger at an imperfect world in which bad things can happen. Ahab sees the white whale as the living personification of all of this, and thus, something in the flesh which he can actually fight and kill.
* {{Revenge}}: Again, practically the textbook example.
** RevengeBeforeReason: Quoth Starbuck -- "Vengeance on a dumb brute! That simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."
*** FridgeBrilliance: Retorts Ahab -- "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man! I'd strike ''the sun'' if it insulted me! For if the sun could do that, then I could do the other." (And if he were to strike the sun, what would happen to his hand...?)
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The whale was based off of a similarly destructive whale named Mocha Dick that plagued Bermuda.
** The events depicted in ''The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex'' were another major inspiration.
* ScavengedPunk: crossed with CreepyAwesome. Ahab asks the ship's blacksmith to build him a harpoon with a shaft forged from a bunch of horse-shoe nails used in races and the cutting edge from straight-razor blades, which he quenches in ''blood''.
* SchoolStudyMedia
* ScienceMarchesOn: While the author was very knowledgeable about cetology, some "facts" he used have since been proven to be inaccurate.
-->"Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish."
** More of a case of ''definitions'' march on. "Fish" originally just meant "animal that lives exclusively in water". Melville recognises that whales are warm-blooded, breathe air, and bear live young, but just doesn't think that a sufficient reason to redefine what "fish" means. As made clear by several other lines in the same chaptern, Melville is very much a [[LumperVsSplitter Lumper, not a Splitter]].
** He also mentions phrenology and physiognomy, both now considered pseudosciences.
* ShownTheirWork: Cetology and all aspects of whale fishing; ''All'', I say. But they're interesting.
** Remove the even-numbered chapters, and you've got an encyclopedia of whaling. Remove the odd-numbered chapters, and you've got an adventure story. And that story still has a bit of the encyclopedia.
* SleepCute: Queequeg and Ishmael. Damn, do they [[http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&global=1&q=cuddlefish+moby+dick#/d3ded0l look cute together]] or what?
* SoleSurvivor: [[spoiler:Ishmael is the only survivor of the sinking of the ''Pequod'']].
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: The book is ''Moby-Dick''. The whale, in-story, is only ever referred to as Moby Dick.
* SuddenlyEthnicity: Toyed with. Ishmael is shocked to discover that "the harpooner" is a South Seas native, but accepts it just as easily.
* SuperPersistentPredator: Captain Ahab. A human version.
* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler: In most film versions, the whale takes Ahab with him. Or is that the other way round? (In the book, the critical consensus is that Moby Dick survives.)]]
* TalkLikeAPirate: {{Justified|Trope}}. "Avast" is an actual period nautical command, and it (and a few others) are used correctly in the story.
* TruthInTelevision: Believe it or not, this book was based very heavily on a true story. Although, the story of ''Moby-Dick'' is quite a "softened" version of the actual events -- the ''real'' tale is far more gruesome and chilling. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_%28whaleship%29 Read for yourself]]. Also, it should be noted the angry ship-sinking cetacean was actually a sperm whale.
** Chapter XLV of the novel itself cites the real-life story as evidence that a sperm whale can indeed sink a ship.
* TragicHero: Ahab really doesn't seem to be a bad captain, certainly better than the captain in the [[ShowWithinAShow story within the story]] who could have ended a mutiny merely by promising to not abuse his men any more but refuses out of pride. He simply suffers from a FatalFlaw of becoming [[RevengeBeforeReason obsessed with vengeance]].
** Ahab even has a wife and son at home, though he mentions them only once, so everyone else who's ever read the book (except Sena Naslund, author of the novel ''Ahab's Wife'') might be forgiven for forgetting that.
* UnreliableNarrator
* ViewersAreMorons: Why Ishmael goes into all the technical aspects of whaling and ships; it's assumed (rightly or wrongly) that most readers don't know about that stuff.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: Starbuck, the lone dissenting voice, has a moment where he's looking at the loaded muskets outside Ahab's cabin. He very seriously considers shooting Ahab in order to put an end to what he sees as a fool's quest. However, his loyalty to his captain (and presumably his Quaker faith as well) stops him.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Starbuck wrestles with this. See above.
* WildSamoan: Largely subverted with Queequeg.
* WoodenShipsAndIronMen: Complete with cries of "Avast!"
* YouCantFightFate
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