I'm not a big Herman Melville fan. I read Moby Dick and found it to be one of the dead driest novel I'd ever read (right up there with Tristam Shanty back in Junior High, and it was pretty boring). I read Moby Dick long after high school not because I had any great desire to read it (it is god awful long). I read it to impress a woman I had started dating who was an English Literature major.
She lent me the book and I read it through bored to tears. I thought it was terrible. His minute description of the whaling industry was painful and unnecessary. But still I read it.
I never did impress the woman. But in the long run, it was for the best. I think English Literature majors prepare you for very little other than pulling espresso at Starbucks (ironic considering I'm talking about Melville and Moby Dick and Starbuck was the first mate of the whaling ship in Moby Dick. It was a whale of a bad book and I say that even though I risk sounding petty.
I believe the great white whale (Moby Dick) and Captain Ahab's obsession was intended to be some kind of religious allegory for something. Ahab loses his leg to the whale in a failed attempt to kill him and spends the rest of his pegleg life trying to catch and kill the whale.
There was a 1950s movie made from the book starring Gregory Peck (Atticus from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird) as Captain Ahab. I vaguely remember watching it as a kid. Regardless, I called on my vast knowledge of Melville and Moby Dick to create the above design of Moby Brick, a Great White Well.
I figured I would make another vain effort to appeal to the high brow audience who would understand the reference. I do wonder, however, if they are really the market for t-shirts, magnets, stickers or coffee cups.
This really blows, Captain Ahab.
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