Benchley's book can be read as a parody of Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851), a great American epic. A great white shark fills the role of Melville's albino whale. Like Moby Dick, the great fish is seen by hunters not simply as an unusually dangerous force, but as something possessing a malignant will.

It seems to be hunting them. "He was waiting for us," yells Brody on the final day of the hunt. As in Melville, the hunt continues for several days. On the final day, Quint's boat suffers the fate of the Pequod, and Chief Brody, like Ishmael (Melville's hero), is the only survivor. While a far less complex character than Melville's Captain Ahab, Quint, like the captain, perishes with his boat, caught in the line of a harpoon.