Experimental Form and Moby Dick
When reading Moby Dick it is not hard to see why the novel did not receive initial and commercial success. Melville’s structural style and the his jumps between narration could have easily confused the average reader at the time. The jumps in genre science literature, to stage drama and a traditional narrative can be confusing and off-putting if you don’t know what you are getting into. The cetology chapter, as we discussed in class, throws a lot of readers off and is credited for where they stopped reading. Personally, I think that this chapter was hyped up to be a lot worse than it actually was. It was a little dull, but it was not that long. Other chapters where Melville abandons Ishmael’s narrative and talks about the history of whaling or shipping are difficult to get through and remove you from the story.
I agree that some of the chapters are a little tough to get through, but without them we might not have the information that we need to get through the rest of the novel. Without learning about each whale and what they looked like, I would probably find myself going online and looking up a sperm whale so I know what I’m reading about. Melville probably felt that these descriptive chapters about cetology, whaling, and sailing were important for contextual reasons because most people during his time had never seen a whale before or even knew how to go about catching one.