Symbolism in Moby Dick

The sea itself is godly--a source of ideas--the inuitive freedom of man himself. If you've ever studied Plato's sequence of reality, you'll understand the implications. (There is a supreme being; this is the ultimate reality. It exists without the existence of anything else. It is from this being that all ideas come forth. This is the second reality. Each of us is an idea from the supreme being. The third reality is a physical body …

…and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." (p. 383-84) Read "The Try-Works" (Ch. 96). "...such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body." (p. 486)-Talk about Plato! "Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven." (p 515)