All collapsed, and the great shroud

Of the sea rolled on as it had

Five thousand years ago.

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, is a novel about a massive hurricane that hits the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts on the morning of October 30th, 1991. The quotation from Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, is appropriate for a situation such as this, due to the waves, the destruction the storm caused, and the changing of the world because of the storm's effects.

First of all, the passage from the Perfect Storm first noted that, "The only sign that something is amiss is along the coast, where huge grey swells start to roll in that can be heard miles away." The "Shroud of the sea" can be viewed as the huge swells that are forming. "On the satellite photos, moist air flowing into the...