The renowned American novelist Herman Melville is best known for literary classics like Moby Dick. Yet throughout his life, Melville privately wrestled with profound questions of faith, belief and doubt. As his friend and contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne observed, Melville relentlessly grappled with matters of “Providence and futurity” that extend beyond human understanding. Melville doubted divine providence, frankly acknowledging to Hawthorne that he “had ‘pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated’” upon death.