"What Melville did through Ishmael. was to put man's distinctly modern feeling of 'exile,' of abandonment, directly at the center of the stage. " (Chase 42). Our understanding of Ishmael sets the scene for the encounter with Ahab and the search for the whale. .

             It is important to note that the book was written in a certain historical period in which the emergence of the technological and Industrial age was just beginning. This was not only changing the face of the world but also challenging religious veracity and truth and, in this questioning, opening man to existential anxiety. .

             The dominant theme that the character of Ahab stresses and which is developed throughout the book is therefore the search for personal and spiritual meaning in the face of the enormity and seemingly empty vacuity of nature in the symbols of the ocean and the whale. Both Ahab and Ishmael are involved in a quest for understanding and inner knowledge. The complexity of this search is epitomized by Captain Ahab in his relentless, almost demonic need to slay the white whale, Moby Dick. This theme is best understood through the symbol of the sea that is a pervasive and philosophically important guide to the meaning of the book. For Ahab the sea, and Moby Dick, represents eternity and the forces of fate that control and determine men's lives. He rebels and defies these forces and, in a heroic stance, demands and answer to why human life is so brutal and meaningless. Essentially, Ahab's search for the whale is symbolic of a passion "that starts from the deepest loneliness that man can know. It is the great cry of man who feels himself exiled form his 'birthright, the merry May-day gods of old'". (Chase 22) Behind the search of the Pequod lies the search for meaning and the need to face the possibility that life may in fact be void of significance.

             This disillusionment with the world is encountered early in the book when we first encounter Ishmael at the beginning of the story expressing an irresistible dislike and estrangement for the world around him.