Moby Dick is the ultimate example of the attempt to include absolutely every possible means to elaborate exactly what the author feels like, thinks about, and what he desires at every possible moment throughout the characters entire time at see. Herman Melville incorporated a number of the major characters tragedies and later personified these events to explicate the nature of a persons character. Let us use the example of Ahab.
"He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of this body, there fed upon paws of its gloom." (Pg. 166)
"So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one had firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together." (Pg. 256)
Both of these passages refer to Ahab's lost leg to the white whale. For the rest of the book, Ahab is obsessed with his quest for revenge on the whale. Although most who read this book will not readily identify with Ahab, his persona is commonly encountered in today's world.