Moby Dick is about ways of looking at the world

The quote about Narcissus in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville can be found in the first chapter, "Loomings." It reads:

"Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all"


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