Herman Melville wrote nineteenth-century American fiction about the sea, work, authority and people whose obsessions push them beyond ordinary limits. Moby-Dick follows sailor Ishmael aboard the whaling ship Pequod under Captain Ahab, whose determination to kill the white whale that injured him gradually overwhelms every other purpose of the voyage. The novel combines adventure with long digressions on whales, whaling, religion and interpretation, making it much less straightforward than a conventional sea story. Bartleby, the Scrivener turns to an office clerk whose repeated refusal to comply disrupts a Wall Street workplace, while Billy Budd returns to shipboard authority and moral judgement. Moby-Dick is the main route into Melville's maritime and philosophical fiction, but Bartleby offers a much shorter example of his interest in work, authority and refusal. Read more Less
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