Moby-Dick: or, The Whale

Moby-Dick, the white whale: emblem of nature yet unnaturally pale, tender and violent, god and demon, an enigma to which Ahab is bound by ropes of vengeful obsession. The Pequod: whaler out of Nantucker, with its polyglot world crew bound upon a voyage for spermwhale, a ship of the damned driven by its ungodly captain to the edge of the void. Ismael: named for a Biblical outcast, narrator, masthead philosopher, sole survivor.