Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
    On the whole it is a very bad decision, especially for one made so light-heartedly. He becomes a little less light-hearted when he finds himself sharing a room with a strange companion at the Spouter Inn.
Meanwhile he continued undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years War, and just escaped from it with a sticking plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A pedlar of heads too—perhaps heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! Look at that tomahawk!
    But Queequeg proves to be his friend, which is more than can be said for Captain Ahab who haunts them at first, clumping with his peg leg on the deck above when there is no one else around, but then finally appears…
He stood like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould… So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of a sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said the Old Gay-head Indian once; “but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ‘em.”…moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifix in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe…
    Ahab soon makes the true purpose of the voyage plain and after 150 pages, the story finally gets underway.
…Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced toward the mainmast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with high raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with that wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”
“Huzza! Huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast…
    Moby Dick possesses 134 chapters. The first thirty-five and the last three comprise one of the truly great works in all literature. The remaining 96 chapters are the most boring, unless you happen to be fascinated by the day-to-day tedium of ship-board life and the mating habits of the Sperm whale. Purists may cringe at my suggestion, but I speak as one who read every word, twice. Once as a boy and was the bloody white whale ever going to turn up—it proved to be a test of manhood in the end; and then as a thirty-year old student studying the work from which I wrote a paper which attained an honour’s result. But unless your manhood or beliefs in female equality need a stiffening endurance test, or you wish to impress your professor by means of quotes that you can bet he has never seen before but will be willing to believe are correct, I suggest you take the short cut I have recommended.