“A century and a half after it first played out, Ahab’s wanton chase was evoked in the ‘war on terror,’ and the attempts to pursue an apparently uncatchable foe, even as it sourced an epic designed to reflect America’s first imperial venture – the getting of the oil that lit and lubricated the Western world.” This quote from Hoare’s “What ‘Moby-Dick’ Means to Me” immediately put into perspective the cultural relevance this novel will have on us today. It also gave me a concrete example of why this is considered The American Novel. We were just discussing in class how the whaling industry was a way for the United States to spread it’s influence in it’s conquest of the ocean; since that industry died out, we’ve used different industries (mainly the military) to perpetuate our global influence. This aspect is really interesting to me because it is one of the most American things I can think of, constantly finding reasons and/or scapegoats to maintain our influence and control across the world.

https://www.thenewscholar.nl/index.php/tns/article/download/mobydick/mobydick/385 I found this essay comparing characters and events from Moby Dick to political figures and their missions during the campaign for the War on Terror (don’t read past the second page if you don’t want to get spoiled). Another quick thing I want to add is this quote Hoare highlights: “Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? – Will He Perish?” Taking into account the relation to American imperialism, this quote could be a questioning of whether our country’s obsession with dominance will ever go away.