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Pequod and its “ungodly, god-likeman,” Captain Ahab, whose obsessivequest for the white whaleMoby-Dick leads the ship and itsmen to destruction. This work, arealistic adventure novel, contains aseries of meditations on the humancondition. Whaling, throughout thebook, is a grand metaphor for thepursuit of knowledge. Realistic cataloguesand descriptions of whalesand the whaling industry punctuatethe book, but these carry symbolicconnotations. In chapter 15, “TheRight Whale’s Head,” the narratorsays that the Right Whale is a Stoicand the Sperm Whale is a Platonian,referring to two classical schools ofphilosophy.Although Melville’s novel is philosophical,it is also tragic. Despitehis heroism, Ahab is doomed andperhaps damned in the end. Nature,however beautiful, remains alienand potentially deadly. In Moby-Dick, Melville challenges Emerson’soptimistic idea that humans canunderstand nature. Moby-Dick, thegreat white whale, is an inscrutable,cosmic existence that dominatesthe novel, just as he obsesses Ahab.Facts about the whale and whalingcannot explain Moby-Dick; on thecontrary, the facts themselves tendto become symbols, and every factis obscurely related in a cosmicweb to every other fact. This idea ofcorrespondence (as Melville calls itin the “Sphinx” chapter) does not,however, mean that humans can“read” truth in nature, as it doesin Emerson. Behind Melville’s accumulationof facts is a mystic visionHERMAN MELVILLEPortrait courtesy HarvardCollege Library— but whether this vision is evil orgood, human or inhuman, is neverexplained.The novel is modern in its tendencyto be self-referential, or reflexive.In other words, the noveloften is about itself. Melville frequentlycomments on mental processessuch as writing, reading,and understanding. One chapter,for instance, is an exhaustive surveyin which the narrator attemptsa classification but finally gives up,saying that nothing great can everbe finished (“God keep me fromever completing anything. Thiswhole book is but a draught — nay,but the draught of a draught.O Time, Strength, Cash and Patience”).Melville’s notion of theliterary text as an imperfect versionor an abandoned draft is quitecontemporary.Ahab insists on imaging a heroic,timeless world of absolutes inwhich he can stand above his men.Unwisely, he demands a finishedtext, an answer. But the novelshows that just as there are no finishedtexts, there are no finalanswers except, perhaps, death.Certain literary references resonatethroughout the novel. Ahab,named for an Old Testament king,desires a total, Faustian, god-likeknowledge. Like Oedipus in Sophocles’play, who pays tragically forwrongful knowledge, Ahab is struckblind before he is wounded in theleg and finally killed. Moby-Dickends with the word “orphan.”Ishmael, the narrator, is an orphanlikewanderer. The name Ishmael39