Vent: Our club voted to skip the 'boring' chapters in 'Moby-Dick' and I think it ruined the whole point.

We were six weeks into the book and everyone was groaning about the cetology chapters. The vote was 8 to 3 to just skip from Chapter 32 to the final chase. I argued that those dense, technical chapters ARE the book's atmosphere, that the grind of the details makes Ahab's madness feel real. We read the ending and half the group said it felt 'random and over the top.' Well, yeah, you cut out the 400 pages of buildup that gives it weight. Has anyone else's group tried to cut corners on a classic and totally missed the author's intent?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscarb716d ago

Honestly my high school class tried that with the battle scenes in War and Peace. Tbh skipping the "boring" war stuff just left us with a bunch of Russians arguing in drawing rooms, which made zero sense. You gotta suffer through the slow parts to get why the ending hits.

paige_ellis595d ago

Okay but the "suffer through the slow parts" line is a bit off. It's not about suffering. Those whale chapters in Moby-Dick are where Melville builds his whole weird world. You're supposed to get a little lost in it, like being stuck on a ship with nothing but weird facts and big thoughts. Skipping them is like fast-forwarding through the quiet parts of a song just to hear the chorus. The noise at the end only makes sense because of the quiet that came before.