|aCaptain Ahab’s fanatical, lifelong obsession with tracking down the great white whale Moby Dick is told by Ishmael, one of the ship’s crew. Sacrificing the safety of his men, the crazed Ahab single-mindedly pursues his goal with a devastating outcome. At it’s very core, Moby Dick is an adventure novel, but Melville unravels the issues surrounding the indoctrinated belief systems of the time, and it also serves as a cautionary tale and a moral fable. Considered as one of the most important American novels of its time, Ishmael's narrative of a man against mammal is symbolic, and compelling to the very end.