The triptych is based on Chapter 87, The Grand Armada, of Herman Melville’s, Moby Dick; or The Whale.

“Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped.”

It depicts an interpretation of the struggle between man and his nature and, as such, that “there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”