Moby-Dick help me with homework: Melville wrote Moby-Dick during a period when Emerson

Melville wrote Moby-Dick during a period when Emerson, Thoreau, and others were developing a Transcendentalist philosophy and extolling the spiritual benefits of living in nature. In what ways can the novel be seen as an argument against such views? How would you characterize nature in Moby-Dick? What view of life, suffering, redemption, does Melville seem to be dramatizing? Is this view relevant or attractive to our time?