On interpretations

 This came from an article I found when looking for symbolism in Moby Dick and I found it entertaining:

 Humor columnist Dave Barry once gave potential English majors some advice using Moby-Dick as an example: -Never say anything about a book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example, suppose you are studying Moby-Dick. Anybody with any common sense would say Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper you say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor...will think you are enormously creative.

 There must be at least some textual evidence. So we don’t advise you to argue that Moby Dick represents Ireland. Still, there’s a good reason that Dave Barry chose Moby-Dick when he wanted to give an example of a Big Important Symbol that has many possible interpretations – and which is obviously demanding to be interpreted, possibly in a ludicrous way.