Themes


 * Knowledge**: Humanity as a species constantly grapples with the unknown, the inexplicable. Ishmael highlights this with his repeated attempts to explain whales. Just as men cannot see below the surface of the water, men cannot glimpse the true nature of God. Moby Dick is God, a whale of immense power that we cannot understand. He resides below the waves, eluding all comprehension. This God allegory shows how human attempts to understand and interpret the spiritual results only in failure and death, as shown by Captain Ahab.


 * Exploitation** : There is a great sense of pride and unity aboard the whaling ships, but this is merely a facade covering the true exploitative nature of the business. The crew of the boat is predominately white, but as Ishmael point out, each of the whale boats, the small boats that set out from the main vessel to kill the whales, relies on a non-white harpooner. On board the boat, non-white crew members do the majority of the dangerous or unpleasant work. One of the best representations of this is by a crew member named Flask. In one particular whale hunt, he steps upon the back of his black harpooner to capture a whale before the competing boats. This is a visual representation of how America was built upon the back of African Americans in order to advance and prosper in the world.