The whole of Moby-Dick may be read as an allegory for humans' search for meaning, with Ahab’s quest to pursue and hunt Moby Dick symbolic of man’s desire to master nature and understand life’s central mystery. The whale, after all, is repeatedly emphasized as a symbol of inscrutability and evasiveness. Scratched with “hieroglyphics,” the whale is an unreadable figure for Ishmael and Ahab, but nonetheless one that they are determined to attempt to decipher. Additionally, the whale is shown to be highly symbolic in its enigma, with its very evasiveness being the quality that enshrouds it with such significance. As Ishmael describes, the terror of the whale lies in its “dumb blankness, full of meaning”.
Following this allegory, we can see the depicted futility of man’s quest to uncover life’s mysteries. After all, it is Moby Dick who proves victorious. Moreover, that this quest proves fatal for Ahab functions as a cautionary tale on the dangers of believing one can know all of life’s mysteries and master nature. Ishmael’s survival, on the contrary, may reflect the higher virtue of his approach, which acknowledges his inferiority in the face of nature and accepts the limits of humans' knowledge.
