The other aspect of the novel that people familiar with it only by its reputation often underestimate: it's humor.
It's a sly often oblique humor, by turns Shakespearian, Victorian, and almost anachronistically postmodern. But it permeates the novel and is there right in the opening paragraph:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
By the time I got through that sentence, the fourth in the novel, I was in.
Finally, one additional quote from the novel that stuck with me:
for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
The next sentences following your quote are also hilarious:
> ...then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.
The humor gives Ishmael an everyman quality. Unlike Cato's grand "philosophical flourish", Ishmael "quietly" takes to the sea. Simultaneously, Ishmael has the mind of a poet, such as when he refers to taking to sea as his response to wanting to shoot himself or someone with "pistol and ball." Melville is basically saying that men, like Ishmael, go to sea so they won't go postal.
The other aspect of the novel that people familiar with it only by its reputation often underestimate: it's humor.
It's a sly often oblique humor, by turns Shakespearian, Victorian, and almost anachronistically postmodern. But it permeates the novel and is there right in the opening paragraph:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
By the time I got through that sentence, the fourth in the novel, I was in.
Finally, one additional quote from the novel that stuck with me:
for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.