The Reader Travels

I love to read adventure novels that include maps. The paths are twisting and turning and you have to reference them from time to time so you can see where you are in relation to the rest of the world. Maps really make me feel like I’m on a journey.

So, when I read Moby Dick, I followed the course of my whaling trip with the map included in the back of the book. The problem with Melville’s map, though, was that it totally gave away the ending. Not that I didn’t know what was going to happen anyway, especially with the not-so-subtle foreshadowing with bad omens every 50 or so pages, but they didn’t have to draw the whole thing on the map.

You can follow the course of the ship by tracing a dotted line from New England, down through the Carribbean, somehow ending up in the South Pacific, where the dotted line ends with a little line drawing of the ship sinking into the water.

So, what I’m saying is that Melville had no concept of suspense. He drags on and on, spending whole chapters describing a whale’s head.

Here’s a helpful tip, if you ever feel compelled to read about Ahab and Ishmael and that crazy white whale, scan each chapter for names of people before you start it. Unless you’re really wrapped up in the whole thing, you can just skip the chapter and go to the next one that mentions people. You won’t be missing any of the “action,” and it’ll be much more bearable.

More later on why I felt thus compelled.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under seafaring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.