Moby Dick and it's Political Symbolism

Herman Melville himself was very active in the politics of the mid-19th Century in America and used his novel Moby Dick as an allegory representative of many factual, historical events leading up to and including the Compromise of 1850. Melville symbolically created the Pequod's crew to coincide with a lot of the American ideologies with which he fervently disagreed. Among these were the idea of Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, and racial and ethnic inequalities. Through Ahab himself, the ship mates, and harpooners, Melville was able to characterize many of the pockets of people within United States. He was also able to symbolically capture the stories of the people who conversely felt the wrath of America's endless growing. Throughout the novel there are small instances of symbology relating back to Melville's idea that the path America was taking in foreign and domestic relations would eventually lead to its ultimate demise.