Does Ahab make the man?

Don't know if this falls under the response category, but a question I've had for a while, and which came into view quite prominently in yesterday's discussion:

Assuming that what literature and art in general does is question categories, and assuming that this questioning often requires a description, albeit partial, of said categories, then (and this is the question): to what extent do works that seek to undo or problematize social order reinforce and sometimes even create that order?

So, to what extent does the kind of questioning of genre, gender, style in Moby Dick, create the category of "brave, single-minded, tough" captain/man?

Is it possible, on the reverse, that category or social conception of leadership and masculinity may have existed in the "real world," meaning not in fiction or in art, but perhaps in that state it was allowed a plurality,  or individuality undone by a work of fiction meant to question it. This goes, I guess, not only for Ahab, but also for Natty Bumppo, Huck Finn, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger.