Moby-Dick is a novel considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab s ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author s death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the twentieth century. D. H. Lawrence called it one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world,and the greatest book of the sea ever written.Call me Ishmael is one of world literature s most famous opening sentences.