Moby Dick or, The Whale is a book that can be read on a number of levels. On the surface it is an adventure story and a mine of information about whaling and the whaling industry. However, the novel also explores the depths of the human psyche and cardinal philosophical questions relating to the meaning of life, religion and good and evil. Sociologically, the novel explores the tension between enlightened thought and the tenets of eighteenth-century Calvinism.

             The central theme of the work, which is clearly referred to in the quotation for this essay, is search for meaning and reality. This is implied by Captain Ahab when he says, "How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond." (Mansfield and Vincent 162) The white whale is a reality and a symbol for Ahab of the most important dimensions of philosophy and life. .

             The Novel begins with the narrator Ishmael's realization that all is not well with the Christian and contemporary world in which he finds himself. Throughout the book there is an undercurrent of criticism of the conventional world and of rigid Christianity, which becomes evident throughout the relationship between Ishmael and the cannibal Queequeg. The biblical names and connotations that resound throughout the work also refer to the sense of spiritual isolation and the loss of a nearness to God and reality that also forms the central trajectory of the work and the symbolism of the hunt for the white whale, Moby Dick. .

             This sense of isolation and separation of many of the main characters emphasizes the main theme of a search for identity and reality in the face of a seemingly alien and intractable world. Ishmael, the narrator and central character, is an exile. The biblical meaning of Ishmael refers to isolation from both mother and father. He can be seen as modern man cut off form his relationship with the world around him in both a physical and spatial sense.