Moby-Dick is no longer relevant to modern readers

The argument

The story of Moby Dick revolves around whaling which in today's society is a dying profession. Japan and Iceland are two of the only countries that are still whaling, allowed only with the permission of 'scientific permits'. A reader today therefore approaches the novel's central activity as something remote and largely abolished, rather than as an industry they have any direct sense of. That distance is more recent than it feels. In the past, whales were hunted for their blubber to make oil. At the height of whaling, from the 1700s to the very early 1900s, most homes still used gas lights and hadn't yet made the switch to electricity. These gas lights used whale oil to operate, which is what made the trade central rather than marginal: it lit the houses of the very people reading about it. The labeling of whales as an endangered species occurred only recently due to overhunting, so what was once an ordinary industry is now understood chiefly as the cause of a conservation problem. The frame through which the subject is read has been inverted. Where a reader wants the history itself, there are more direct routes to it. Teaching history through straight-forward factual accounts is more informative, as the relevance of whale hunting is beginning to wane in today's society. Not only that but Moby Dick is a collection of metaphors formed into a narrative to define man's struggle, morality, and mortality — and metaphors of that kind depend on a reader feeling the weight of the world they are drawn from. While these metaphors may have once been relevant, in modern society the story lacks the impact it used to have.

Context

Moby Dick is an obsolete writing that, while a good read during its time, lacks any meaningful contribution for todays readers beyond being considered old literature.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While Moby Dick is a classic piece of literature, that does not reduce its importance or its relevance. The book's following of Ishmael's narrative allows for students to both speculate and discuss the intent of the narrative. Since the readers do not know if Ishmael is truly his name or his origin, the literature is interpretive. The book contains many metaphors about religion, meaning, and morality. These metaphorical qualities not only add to the story's character but allows insight into the characters and who they are as people. Ishmael's experience on the ship also highlights the diversity of characters, races, and experiences in the novel. Though it does have a large focus on Ishmael's line of thinking and the knowledge he possesses, Moby Dick is an excellent introduction to classic American and romantic literature.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A novel's subject is not the same as its relevance. On this reasoning the Iliad, Middlemarch and most of the canon would fall with it, since their occupations and institutions have also passed, and the argument would have to accept that consequence. [Rejecting P2] The account of whale oil and gas lighting explains why whaling mattered, which tells against the premise it is offered for: a reader learns those stakes from the novel itself, and the disappearance of the trade is what makes the depiction informative rather than redundant. [Rejecting P3] The claim that the metaphors have lost their force is asserted without argument, and it sits badly with the premise's own description of them as concerning struggle, morality and mortality — subjects that have not dated. The counter-argument's point about the narrator's unreliability also goes unanswered: the novel's interpretive difficulty is a reason it is taught, not a reason to set it aside.