According to this iconoclastic and sure-to-be-contentious re-casting by a renowned critic, the great American novel Moby Dick is a work that has been widely misread, an error that continues to this day.

According to Barry Sanders, Herman Melville’s best- known book is not a novel, does not pretend to be a novel, and was not intended by its author to be read as a novel. Moby Dick is America’s first manifesto, a tocsin sounded to warn us about the encroaching end of nature.  

Sanders argues that Moby Dick needs to be recognized as Melville's manifesto: a bold statement warning of the destruction of the natural world made most evident in the book’s central metaphor: the relentless pursuit of the whale, the first sentient being in Genesis and one of the most startling mammals—possessed of hair and scales, a tail and breasts—and the largest of the creatures on earth, weighing up to 400,000 pounds.

Whalers in Melville’s day hunted and killed these extraordinary behemoths of nature, for their oil, sold to people for cooking and to light their homes. Today, especially under the new Trump presidency, the energy being pursued comes from oil and gas. But the endeavor remains the same: acquiring and selling fuel for which entrepreneurs and adventurers are prepared to kill off all of nature. 

According to this iconoclastic and sure-to-be-contentious re-casting by a renowned critic, the great American novel Moby Dick is a work that has been widely misread, an error that continues to this day.

According to Barry Sanders, Herman Melville’s best- known book is not a novel, does not pretend to be a novel, and was not intended by its author to be read as a novel. Moby Dick is America’s first manifesto, a tocsin sounded to warn us about the encroaching end of nature.  

Sanders argues that Moby Dick needs to be recognized as Melville's manifesto: a bold statement warning of the destruction of the natural world made most evident in the book’s central metaphor: the relentless pursuit of the whale, the first sentient being in Genesis and one of the most startling mammals—possessed of hair and scales, a tail and breasts—and the largest of the creatures on earth, weighing up to 400,000 pounds.

Whalers in Melville’s day hunted and killed these extraordinary behemoths of nature, for their oil, sold to people for cooking and to light their homes. Today, especially under the new Trump presidency, the energy being pursued comes from oil and gas. But the endeavor remains the same: acquiring and selling fuel for which entrepreneurs and adventurers are prepared to kill off all of nature.