The most appropriate answer is (e) all of
these.
The critic Tony Tanner, in his introduction to the
1998 Oxford World's Classic edition of Melville's seminal work, contends that this
novel could only have been written in mid-nineteenth century America, a "time of
dominion and expansionary confidence in the western world." For, Tanner continues,
Melville generates both an epic and a myth in his work with the many chapters that
objectively categorize whales and dissect the business of whaling also directing the
reader symbolically to the mythical majesty of the largest creature of the sea. Walking
the decks of the whaling ship that seeks the inscrutable white whale, Moby Dick, is
Captain Ahab, monomanical in his desire for revenge against the creature, who speaks in
an elevated style suitable to the epic hero/anti-hero. In this elevated style, also,
Ahab examines the metaphysical characteristics of the great whale, who is but "a
pasteboard mask" that hides its inscrutable malice; this pasteboard mask Ahab swears he
will break through:
That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate;
and be the White Whale agent, or be the White Whale principal, I will wreak that hate
upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted
me.
Ahab vows to find the
truth, truth that has "no confines." And, he sets out upon a voyage that ends in more
than death.
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