“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville (post 6): Is main character Ishmael, Ahab, or Moby-Dick? Or is it wrong to choose the foremost alternate personality?

Some readers would say Ishmael is the protagonist, because he begins and ends the story. Others would say Ahab is the main character, because the story is about his conflict with the whale, who is the villain. Still others, who believe society should save the whale, and that Moby-Dick was just defending himself, might say the whale was the hero and Ahab the villain.

I don’t know Melville’s opinion, but he titled the book “Moby-Dick or The Whale,” and devoted many pages to whales, in a sense giving Moby-Dick more of a backstory than Ishmael or Ahab. At least that’s how it seems halfway through the book.

It may not be fair to ask a novelist to choose his hero among his characters, when all of them may have been his alternate personalities.