How can Moby Dick be considered as a work that bears similarities to legends and myths?Herman Melville's Moby Dick

With its masterful drama of life on the seas, Herman
Melville's Moby Dick has certainly emerged as one of the great
poetic epics of world literature. The voyage of the Pequod on which
the crew and its captain seem destined for a disastrous fate, truly seems epic, much
like an odyssey of its own. Moby Dick possesses the following elements of the
epic:

1. long
   narrative


2. formal
   style - As Ahab sees the dying whale turn sunward he comments, "He too
   worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!  Oh that these
   too-favoring eyes should see these too-favoring sights."
   


3. serious subject - Ahab
   seeks the great white whale as a cosmic force.  He states in Chapter 36 that all
   "visible objects...are but as pasteboard masks" behind which lie metaphysical answers. 
   There is an entire chapter devoted to "whiteness" and its significance in representing
   the unnatural and evil.


4. central figure is
   quasi-divine - While Ahab may be the antithesis of divine, there is a
   preternatural quality to him that makes him more than a mere mortal.  His physical
   appearance, his charisma as he elicits the support of the crew to hunt the whale
   indicate his powers above the ordinary. actions of the central figure determine the fate
   of all.

In addition, Moby Dick contains the
qualities of a literary epic:

1. main
   character/hero is of cosmic importance - On the world of the sea, the
   captain is god; Ahab certainly lords over all, even the harpooners.  He sets the course
   for the lives of the others.


2. setting is
   huge, and may involve a great deal of travel - Ahab maps out the route of
   the great whale, and the crew travels all the way to the Japanese
   seas.


3. action involves battle and superhuman
   deeds - The attempt to capture and kill Moby Dick is epic in proportion. 
   The harpooners do, indeed, perform deeds above the ordinary.  While caught in the ropes,
   Ahab yet continues to try to kill the giant
   whale.


4. supernatural being takes an interest
   and even a part in the action - At different points in the hunt, Melville
   describes the whale as though it intends to kill the crew and do evil.  It is "a
   malicious being."


5. the action is written in
   a style apart from the ordinary - There is a dramatic form used in the
   description of the scene in which the candles erupt from the main masts during the
   typhoon.  The sermons of Father Mapple and Ishmael's lectures on the high calling of
   whaling are elevated forms.  Throughout the novel, Melville imparts a special intensity
   to many of his words.  For instance, he uses words of tone:  wildness, moodiness,
   mystical, malicious.  Melville also creates "verbal nouns" as in the words of Ahab who
   says that the whale "tasks me, he heaps
   me."