Investigating details that are not “all that important” is I would argue what makes Moby Dick a masterpiece. Many are bored to death by whaling details and look

Investigating details that are not “all that important” is I would argue what makes Moby Dick a masterpiece. Many are bored to death by whaling details and look to “improve” Melville’s work by cutting that out and keeping only the “plot”. However, buried within all the whaling details is the narrator looking deeply into all things, trying to find the purpose and point of it all, to see if he can ascertain some truth. He’ll offer some conclusions one chapter, only to contradict them the next. What is truth? What’s the point of this all? This tool, this skill, this ship, this life, this world? Melville doesn’t offer any explicit answers, which is another reason it is a brilliant novel as it forces the reader to come to their own conclusions. And, in the end, even with some conclusions formed we witness the mini-apocalypse at the end of the novel in which our narrator is saved by mere chance (or is it), by the mortifications of a “alien” friend. Our narrator investigates everything deeply, only to find he goes on by the grace of others. And of course, all this is not even to mention we simultaneously having Ahab trying to pierce the very veil of God as a subplot…a true work of genius! Warning: wrestling is required with this novel.