Chasing the Great Red Whale: Nautical Knowledge and Characterization in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October

Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" (1984) is one the most successful sea novels of the last decades. A modern "Moby Dick" for its stress on haunting as a main theme, it includes several motifs such as the importance of 'knowledge' and sea mastery, personal revenge, and the politic tension between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. More importantly, the novel provides an interesting corpus of sea terminology, military, and Navy language, and offers detailed descriptions of a submarine and all its parts, components, devices, and operations. In this perspective, the article aims to analyze how the symbiosis between the protagonist, Captain Marko Ramius, and the Red October (a massive nuclear submarine) - that is, between man and machine - is built through Clancy's skillful writing. In particular, the submarine almost becomes a living creature, and the novel's technical yet accessible language and specific vocabulary are key to this astonishing achievement. The study also aims to fairly honor Clancy with academic consideration, and to inspire further interest in and discussion on his most notable novel, especially in terms of linguistic and terminological analysis.