قصة الكتاب :


“Moby-Dick” is a novel by Herman Melville. It is considered among the best in novel writing, though it is a very hard piece to read since the author speaks at length about whales and how to hunt them, how to use their meat and blubber as well as how to manufacture their oil as if it was a scientific novel.
However, one who reads it carefully and patiently will notice that it is a human epic and a sea adventure that is aimed not at hunting whales and use whatever their bodies may offer, but rather a revenge quest to hunt down a white whale that has previously destroyed Ahab\'s ship and severed his leg at the knee which he later replaces with a wooden leg (Ahab is one of the main characters in the novel and captain of the whaler “The Pequod”).
Out of his desire for revenge, Ahab sails on his last adventure seeking his rival whom he finds and battles to death. At the end of the fight all are dead, including Ahab himself, the whale and all of Ahab’s sailors, officers and harpooners, except for the narrator “Ishmael” who survives thanks to a coffin that his Indian sailor friend Queequeg prepared for himself.
The events of the novel begin when Ishmael and his Indian friend join a whale-hunting ship alongside other sailors. Their whaler “The Pequod” sets out southwards across the ocean carrying all needed supplies for a long, three-year journey during which the seamen will not see anything but water and the sky. However, the narrator does not see Ahab, the Pequod’s Captain, leader of this journey and the hero of revenge, but rather hears from the bosun that he is a person of a kind heart, though somehow eccentric. He does not leave his cockpit claiming he was sick, or maybe for other reasons. In many of its chapters, the novel describes whales, their species, characteristics and hunting methods. We also notice that each sailor is assigned to a certain task as some are guards while others are rowers. There are also the harpooners who shoot large harpoons at the hunted whale and then climb over its back to check if it is dead or not. After killing the whale, all sailors cooperate to lift it to the ship where it is flayed and cut to pieces. However, we should not forget the dangers of such work.
The author dedicates a whole chapter to describing the white whale and explaining its white color in excessive details. He talks about the various implications of this color that reflects many notions such as holiness, purity, wedding dress, white hair of old men, the threat that the polar bear and the tropical shark pose and the color of ghosts. At the conclusion of this journey we realize just how dangerous and illusive nature is as the white whale is among the most dangerous of all living things.
The Pequod sails on in the Atlantic Ocean heading southeast until it reaches warm waters. There, Ahab makes his first appearance on deck. He addresses the sailors and emphasizes the necessity to take down Moby-Dick. He nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. Along the way, the Pequod encounters several other ships whose sailors are asked about Moby-Dick. The whale is finally spotted and the epic fight begins. At the end of the battle, the whale is killed, but all of the sailors are also dead, except for Ishmael who lives to tell the tale.
The novel is worth the read and the contemplation in its events and language because the famous researcher Dr. Ihsan Abbas, who translated it into Arabic, was able to explore the depths of the language and extract many sea-related words and terminologies that we never knew and which were absent from our daily conversations.