Post-Moby Stress Disorder

So I may definitely be having post-Moby Stress disorder (PMDSD).  I had a nightmare last night in which I was at this large resort on the west coast  that had piers going miles out to sea so people could watch whales up close, and they were very real-looking whales... but all of the sperm whales I saw were white and trying to kill the humans.  It's as if Moby-Dick had an enormous posterity, and somehow they all came out white. And I was scared.  And the people who owned the pier wanted to capture me and my family and turn us into animals to keep at a zoo.  I managed to stop it when I punched my mother in the back three times, and then I woke up.

So I didn't know liking Moby-Dick too much could do that to you.  Either that or I've been having too much fun playing the video game.

And my Western lit class today didn't help.  We were talking about Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and Dr. Snyder and one of my classmates kept comparing Abbey's writing to Melville's.  So asked them "Will you please STOP! I had a nightmare about white whales last night."

Dr. Snyder's response: "As you should."

What? Moby-Dick is supposed to haunt my dreams? 

But this invasion of my subconscious has me thinking. Cheri's post about the persistent popularity of Moby-Dick recounts how in popular culture, while not many people have read the book the story of a revenge-bent captain hunting a white whale is still well-known. I think I want to take her question to heart: what is it about Moby-Dick that has made it enduring?  And what about it makes it pervade the popular consciousness?

Allow me to explain myself: I am a fangirl of Moby-Dick not only because it is awesome but because it's Moby-Dick:  it's the 1000-page book that nobody reads.  But last weekend I finished reading it, and I consider it an accomplishment. There is definitely an aspect to Moby-Dick that, given its reputation, that makes it interesting to have a connection to.   I want to call it "quaint," but I think that would be too weak of a word.  Maybe "peculiar." No, it's "bizzare." It's out of the ordinary.  Perhaps there was something in the original story that would characterize it as bizzare: Captain Ahab with his obsession and his peg-leg; Queequeg, Stubb, the other random happenings aboard the Pequod.  And not to mention it's very nautical. What can I say? It's full of awesome. Why not celebrate! It's a big, loose fish in a sea of a culture that celebrates and values spontaneity.

But if one is so proud of having read such a ginormous book, then what else should be haunting about Moby-Dick? 

One question that bothers me is, why is the whale such a huge part of the pariphanelia if we know the whale is responsible for the deaths of multiple people in the book? It's like wearing a cross. Are we taunting Moby? Or does the whale stand for something in popular culture? Like an elusive dream?

Does it haunt us because we all have white whales we are chasing? I'm not chasing anything...ok if I said that I would totally be lying. But I'm not Ahab, seriously. I don't think the dream was an omen.

Ishmael, for one, definitely comes out of his experience with a deep reverence for the White Whale, as well as perhaps a fear of it. A whiteness that he equates with death and decay; the barbs and broken harpoons of sailors it has outswam and destroyed.

What was it in my dream last night that haunted me?  The whales were after me and my family, they were going to eat me, and they were HUGE, like, I could tell in the dream they were life-sized.  And  they were white like Moby-Dick, a whiteness that perhaps my subconscious equated with my own death.

Questions this makes me ask:
What is the influence of Moby-Dick in pop culture? What does this say about how pop culture works?
How does the way people summarize Moby-Dick work in real life? What is the connection between compressed perceptions and reality?  How does this type of thinking work?