The Great American Novel Revisited: Myth, Memory, and Morality in Moby-Dick

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) occupies an anomalous position in the American literary canon: largely misunderstood and commercially unsuccessful upon publication, it was subsequently elevated during the twentieth-century "Melville Revival" to the preeminent status of the Great American Novel. This critical trajectory mirrors the internal architecture of the text itself, which operates as a meta-commentary on how national mythologies are forged, how communal memory is preserved or suppressed, and how moral agency falters under ideological obsession. By interrogating the intersections of myth, memory, and morality, Melville deconstructs the foundational tenets of nineteenth-century American exceptionalism, offering an enduring critique of industrial expansion, theological rigidity, and democratic vulnerability.