Henry’s fixation with Aparicio’s book closely parallels Guert’s fixation with Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. Just as Henry makes The Art of the Fielding the guiding force of his life, Guert’s dedication to Melville drives his career. Moby Dick has become the lens through Guert interprets his experiences, and he’s woefully unprepared for failure. While an undergraduate at Westish, Guert discovered an unpublished lecture given by Melville, and this literary discovery propelled him to academic fame. Encouraged to follow in his hero’s footsteps, Guert spent three years at sea, attempted to author a novel, and realized that he was meant to be an academic critic. He became an expert in 19th-century literature, and his critical text The Sperm Squeezers became a hallmark of studies of 19th-century male sociality.

Guert’s reverence for Melville has had a considerable impact on his relationship with Pella. Desperate to make her father pay as much attention to her as he did to the beloved text, 14-year-old Pella rebelled by getting a tattoo of a sperm whale that matched Guert’s. Pella is so certain that Guert wanted to be forever associated with the sea, like his hero, that she organizes his disinterment so that he can be laid to rest in Lake Michigan.

Moby Dick shapes Guert’s relationship with masculinity as well. Melville suggests that men can achieve a masculine ideal only in an isolated male space like a ship. “The Lee Shore,” Guert’s favorite chapter of Moby Dick (which Pella reads as a eulogy), suggests that the sea promotes a sense of self-discovery and worldly understanding: “But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!” (Melville, Herman. “The Lee Shore.” Melville Electronic Library).