One man against himself––and an uncatchable whale.
 
Melville’s “Moby Dick” is an adventure novel that goes deeper than the surface––and so does the whale. It’s as much an epic tale as a psychological one, and of the mad conquest of captain Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod. The pursuit of vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage, may very well be the undoing of everyone aboard.
 
With its 135 chapters and 600 pages, it is quite the literary piece of work. Though it was a commercial failure when it published in 1851, it now belongs to the list of Classic English literature.