Surface: The Key to Understanding Moby-Dick

There are many key themes and words in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. One of the more interesting words found repeatedly is the word surface. There are several ways to interpret this word; it is the veil under which the unknown resides, it is the dividing line between the limits of human knowledge and that which is unknowable, it is the barrier that protects the soul from falling below, and it is a finite form . The first and most easily recognized is the repeated use of the word, appearing twenty-one times in the text from chapter thirty-two to one hundred thirty-five. In each of these instances the word is used in the physical sense, the surface of the water or the substantive surface of an object. Another way that surface can be read is as the idea of surface. The word surface lends itself...