Finally, we have some insight into why Moby Dick, may not have been as popular as Melville had hoped. The British hated it, or as O.W. Riegel puts it, “were unable to see it as “anything more than a poorly constructed whaling story(196).” His novel was “tested against the canons of unity, coherence, and emphasis (196),” and within this lens could not have had any hope of succeeding.

These criticisism’s definitely make sense, Melville tested us in class, with his ability to weave this story in every possible direction, enlightening us and then leaving us grasping through water, and debris from the deconstruction of the Pequod. We can apreciate this novel now for what it was, an intentionally experiemental novel, of which now many abound, and can point to this great American novel, as its forefather, the most experimental of all experimental novels.

Riegel’s reconstruction of how it was received by the literary community provided the context for what Melville was going up against, and why it was unappreciated: it was going against the English literary canon “tested against the canons of unity, coherence, and emphasis. (196).” However, instead of attempting to measure up to the great literary creations of authors past, Melville resisted and created something entirely new, not just a book about whaling (action), but about whaling (industry), completely reliant on the labor it gently coaxed and roughly extorted from free, enslaved, and ostracized people. He commented on the most important issues of his time, and even of ours, so many years in the future, using the novel to reflect the people he was speaking to, Americans.