The whale means everything - and nothing : Moby-Dick

What is the significance of the whale? What does it symbolize? For a while, we can put aside all the taunting questions, the allusions, the history, the Biblical and mythological references, because once the first whale is landed Melville takes a bit of a shift and the whale becomes: a commodity. Suddenly the whale whale lies before us, or beside the boat, swarming with sharks like maggots on cheese as Melville memorably puts it, the head severed and dangling above the bow from a great grappling hook, and the whalemen cut the blubber off in great sheets and prepare to boil it down. This great beast is nothing more than a source of oil, something to be melted into barrels, stowed away, and sold for hard cash. How unromantic, how prosaic, how gross, what a let-down. But that, too, is part of the greatness of this book - that it can stop once in a while and say: this is what it's all about, a great economic drive, there no legend and romance here, it's just a bunch of guys trying to make a living, and a profit for the faraway owners. Who can forget the blubber being stripped from the carcass, or the gross sense of Stubb eating the flesh basically raw. What does it taste like? fishy? oily? beefy? Melville never says actually (surprising - did he never taste a hunk, amid all this research?). Who can forget Stubb expertly severing the head with a few quick strokes? who can forget the brains of the whale, a are delicacy, for some I guess. The whale means everything - and nothing. At the end, he's just fuel, like a flatcar full of coal