Herman Melville's 1851 novel — narrated by Ishmael — following Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick — combining encyclopaedic whaling detail with philosophical meditation and tragedy — the supreme American novel.
Creates the American novel of obsession — Moby-Dick establishes the white whale as the symbol for whatever a person projects their need for meaning onto, and Ahab's destruction as the result of making a symbol into a goal; the novel is simultaneously an obsession tragedy, a democratic parable, and a philosophical meditation on evil and inscrutability.
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