Moby Dick (The White Whale): When My English Is So Weak It's A Challenge To Read A Good Novel Like This.

Old stories have strange English, It's a challenge to read them for someone not native like me.. But the story of "The White Whale" is one I've heard about since I was young. I really want to read and understand this story so I'll do it!!

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Salam (Peace)

When I was looking for a collection of Hans Christian Andersen stories in Kindle format (after I read one of them)... I've came across the AmazonClassics books... I've looked them up and two of them caught my attention: Anne of Gables... and Moby Dick.

For Anne story, I've watched an anime adaption of the book when I was young, I forgot it by now.. but I want to read the actual story... I did the same with Heidi the last year. (and I have to say: Heidi is the best children book I've read.)

But Moby Dick is a different case... I watched some parodies.. and many references to this story... But I never saw anything about the actual novel.

"The White Whale" as a creature is something I liked to imagine since my childhood.. I'm not talking about the species of real whales that's called that in Arabic "الحوت الأبيض" (which literally means the White Whale). I'm talking about the imaginary pure white massive thing.

The real white whale.

So I was glad to find this book... until I read the first ten pages....

My First Impression

It's too hard... It's English but I felt like I'm trying to read another language.... you see,since I'm not native I always process the English words I see as the Arabic meaning in my mind (that's why I'm good at writing English but can'r speak it to save my life)... and that doesn't happen with the individual words.. but I process the whole sentence together. so If there's a word I'm not sure of it's meaning the other words in the sentence will make the meaning more clear.

And then there's this:

It's a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it's a dump 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, and it requires requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-- then, I account it high time to get to the sea as soon as I can.

(Bolded phrases were hard for me.)

I understand every word by itself... but it's hard for me to process a meaning for these sentences into imagination.. it's like I'm reading another language... I don't know how easy this part is for Native speakers. it might be easy and I'm the one who is strange... But still....

While I feel like I understand what's happening... I just can't feel the beauty of it like the other novels I read where the words go into my head as scenes, Those times when there's a word I don't understand, I look it up and understand everything at the spot...

Still... the first 10 pages I read are good even though were hard to understand.... I'll try to read it until I understand it better... and maybe by the time I'll reach the ending of the book. (which is pretty far) I'll reach another level in English.

This made me realize how all the English stories/novels I was reading before were too simple.

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