On board the whaling ship Pequod, a crew of wise men and fools, renegades, and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by a crazed captain hell-bent on hunting down Moby Dick, the mythic White Whale who left him crippled. As the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swing open, Melville transforms the little world of the whale-ship into a crucible where mankind's fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate. Teeming with ideas and imagery, and with its extraordinary, compressed intensity sustained by a buoyant, mischievous irony and by moments of exquisite beauty, Melville's masterpiece is both a great American epic and one of the most profoundly imaginative creations in literary history.