An 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville concerning Captain Ahab's monomaniacal, revenge-driven hunt for a white sperm whale named Moby-Dick. Stylistically, the novel's prose entwines elements of the King James Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. It is often praised as the Great American Novel.
Second only to its reputation as a mind-numbingly garrulous exposition of man's relationship to nature and nineteenth century whaling among American high school literature students, the novel is best remembered in the popular conscience for the climactic scene of Ahab, armed with a harpoon, confronting Moby-Dick as the Pequod falls apart.
