Saturday, 2:15 PM From the Metro staff at The Boston Globe  Q&A:
Sizing up a whale of a tale  October 10, 2008 11:43 AM Email|
Comments (0)| Text size +  By Roy Greene, Globe Staff  The state
House of Representatives has approved a bill that would make
"Moby-Dick" the official novel of Massachusetts. Boston.com
asked Boston University's Maurice S. Lee, an assistant professor
of English and an expert on 19th-century American literature,
about the historical significance of Herman Melville's epic
work. Q. What makes "Moby-Dick" a great and enduring novel, even
though it can be daunting to some readers?   A. Besides women,
the novel has everything a big novel should have: compelling
characters, moral complexity, philosophical depth, heightened
emotion. What particularly distinguishes "Moby-Dick" is its
strange mix of powerful and playful language and its wildly
experimental form.  It also is a weirdly prophetic text: The
passages about bloody wars in Afghanistan and tyrants taking
oil-seeking ships to their doom