A lot of people ask me on a pretty regular basis why I chose to focus on Moby Dick for my PhD project, and while I often list how incredibly poetic the language is as one of my reasons, the main facet of my fascination can easily be summarized in this little quote presented at a lecture I attended on the novel four years ago. ⠀
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"Of course he is a symbol. Of what? I doubt if even Melville knew exactly. That's the best of it."⠀
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Because imagine - a novel written over a century ago, analysed to death, and still there exists no consensus on its meaning. And maybe, just maybe, that's part of it - the lack of a single interpretation giving way to a multitude of personal interpretations, leaving the novel free to mean whatever it wants to mean to each individual who reads it xx