A tagline for an article that recently appeared in Crain's Chicago Business caught my attention: "Is Hershey the white whale for Oreo-maker Mondelez?" The article mentions that the Chicago-based snack maker, Mondelez (the company that makes Chips Ahoy cookies, Oreo cookies, and Ritz crackers, among several other well-known snack items) is exploring an acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Hershey. Hershey is what is known in business circles as a "white whale" due to the potential for Mondelez to significantly increase market share and revenue. A "white whale" is a potential customer, client, or business acquisition that is particularly difficult to win over or to persuade to make a purchase. The term comes from the classic book, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
I just recently finished reading Moby-Dick for the third time. While it's one of his most famous novels, it's neither my personal favorite nor even one of his best, at least in my opinion. I've read a number of Melville's books over the years, and I don't really know how or why I have read Moby-Dick on three different occasions. The book is considered the prototypical "Great American Novel" (whatever that means), so I first read it during my senior year in high school. I even had to write a research thesis on all of the symbolism that Melville used in the novel. I think I read it a second time, some time either during college or shortly after, because I couldn't remember any of the symbolism or why it was considered a "Great American Novel". I started reading it a third time, after reading Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick (one of my favorite authors right now). Philbrick called Moby-Dick "the greatest American novel ever written" and claims to have read the book at least 12 times during his lifetime. Notably, Melville is said to have based his story of the white whale on the true story of the Nantucket whaling ship Essex, which was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale on November 20, 1820. Philbrick too was inspired by the story and wrote about it in his book, In the Heart of the Sea, which was later made into a movie of the same name directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, and Brendan Gleason.
I have to admit. The book was still a tough read, even on the third go-round. Part of the reason is that Melville added several chapters on a variety of subjects that were tangentially related to the main plot of the story. For example, there are chapters on the classification of the different species of whales and cetology, the science of whales (at least what was known about whales at the time). There are entire chapters dedicated to what life was like aboard a whaler in the 19th century in incredibly minute detail. While I can appreciate the rationale for including all of these so-called digressive chapters, they add significantly to the overall length and complexity of the book.
Moby-Dick is certainly not alone when it comes to books that incorporate large portions of seemingly irrelevant text that doesn't seem to contribute to the plot of the story. Many epic novels are structured in this way. While not necessarily a classic, William Goldman's book The Princess Bride (made into a movie by the same name in 1987) is presented as an abridgement of a longer work by a fictional author, S. Morgenstern (the actual title of the novel is The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure). Goldman uses the fictional frame story that his own grandfather read him the book aloud when he was a child. When he found the book later in life, he hated it because there were so many digressive chapters on the history of Guilder and Florin (the two countries featured in the book), the hereditary family tree of Prince Humperdinck, and various commentaries of the politics of the age. Goldman then "re-wrote" the book and removed all of the "boring parts". One can only wonder if Moby-Dick would benefit from a similar abridgement!
So, what did I learn from reading Moby-Dick a third time? First, the novel reinforced what I already knew, that whales are both highly intelligent and fascinating creatures (for example, did you know that whales sleep with half of their brain at a time?). Second, if you skipped all of the digressive chapters, the story is really enjoyable (dare I say "a whale of a tale"?). Third, just because something is a classic doesn't mean that everyone has to like it. Moby-Dick is not for everyone, and you shouldn't read it just to say that you have done so. Last, and perhaps most importantly, is a lesson I thankfully learned a long time ago that is often lost on high school English teachers and college literature professors. Unless we have solid evidence that the author used a particular word, sentence, or passage as symbolism, we shouldn't necessarily take someone else's interpretation of that same word, sentence, or passage as gospel. What really matters is what you as the individual reader gets out of the word, sentence or passage. Nothing else should matter.
Personally, I see the novel as a cautionary tale for what happens when an individual becomes too obsessed with something - in this case, Captain Ahab's unhealthy obsession, bordering on madness, for the white whale known as Moby-Dick. As Starbuck says to Ahab, trying desperately one last time to give up his monomaniacal pursuit of the whale, "Moby-Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seeks him." One can only wonder how things will turn out between Mondelez and Hershey...
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