Is Moby-Dick worth reading, and how do you get through it?

Herman Melville's novel came out in 1851, first in London in three volumes as The Whale, then in New York a month later under the title we know. According to Wikipedia's article on the book, it got mixed reviews, sold poorly and was out of print when Melville died in 1891. Its reputation as one of the great American novels only arrived in the twentieth century. So if you find it odd, you are in good company: so did its first readers.

What the book really is

The story is simple enough. Ishmael, a young man with nothing keeping him on land, signs on to the whaling ship Pequod and becomes friends with the harpooneer Queequeg. The captain, Ahab, has lost a leg to a white sperm whale and has decided to hunt it down at any cost. The crew sails around half the world with him.

But the story is perhaps half the book. Melville drew on his own years as a sailor in the early 1840s, including time on a whaler, and on wide reading about whales and whaling. He also wanted to write about everything else: friendship, class, good and evil, how hard it is to see the truth of anything. So the novel keeps changing shape. There are sermons, songs, chapters written like scenes from a play with stage directions, comic set pieces, philosophical asides, and long sections that read like an eccentric encyclopaedia of whales: their classification, their anatomy, how they are hunted and how their oil is processed. Ishmael is the narrator throughout, and much of the pleasure is in his voice: curious, wry, prone to wandering off.

About the whale chapters

These are what make people give up. Critics point out that they are arranged with care, and they do build a picture of the whale that makes Ahab's obsession feel bigger. They are also often very funny, in a straight-faced way. But you are reading for pleasure, not an exam. A reasonable approach:

• Read the first ten or so chapters in full. Ishmael and Queequeg on land are the warmest part of the book and they set the voice.
• When a chapter turns into a lecture, read the first page. If it grips you, keep going; if it doesn't, skim to the end and move on. You will not lose the plot.
• Never skip a chapter where the crew meets another ship. These meetings, and the encounters with whales, carry the story forward and raise the stakes.
• Slow down again for the last stretch. The final chase is some of the most gripping writing in the book.

Tricks that help

Read it aloud now and then. Much of it is built like speech and sermon; Ahab's big speeches in particular make more sense heard.

Use short chapters to your advantage. Many are just a few pages. Two or three a night will get you through in a season.

Try an audiobook for the essay chapters. Listening while walking turns the whaling lore into something closer to a good podcast. Our page on whether audiobooks count says yes.

Don't hunt for symbols. The book is famous for meaning many things at once. Let it; you don't need to decide what the whale stands for.

For more general strategies, see our guide to reading a classic novel without giving up.