Oh the Whiteness

I wanted to take a post to talk about the significance of "white" in Moby Dick so far, at least from what I'm interpreting. Shelly also posted her interpretation in case you want her perspective about Moby as Diety.

I started talking about my views in class and I just wanted to reiterate them here. I've tried doing a few simple searches to see if I could get some supporters to back my white whale ideas but the searches didn't turn up much. I even tried a couple searches through the sources at the BYU library but apparently I've already lost all the MLA database savvy I gained last semester from my literary criticism class because I was unsuccessful there as well.

But look at this passage for a minute:

In chapter 69 the killed and hung whale is described thus: "The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre" There is also the mention of the white bones of the dead whales.

I feel that this version of the cover is both white AND unsettling. And in the creative commons that's right yes.

In his chapter about whiteness, after describing holy associations with the color white, Melville (as Ishmael) states: "The elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror tot he furthest bounds." 
He goes on to name some scary white things like sharks and polar bears.

To me, Melville's descriptions of Moby Dick are certainly divorced from holy associations. In my sightings of the color white, it's also strongly associated with death. He almost seems to be a ghost of a slain whale come to seek revenge on his killers.

This strange, unholy whiteness is reiterated in the chapter about The Albatross, the white ship that the Pequod encounters. When the crew of the white ship tries to communicate, their speaking horn falls overboard and they awkwardly pass by each other in silence. If whiteness is associated with death, does this show Ahab's inability to listen to what the dead might be trying to say? His monomania with killing Moby Dick prevents him from perhaps hearing the dead whales crying out against him.

Is the author against whaling, then, that he would send spectral dead whale symbols after his Ahab for revenge?

It's difficult to tell! On the one hand, he seems truly interested in the business of whaling. He finds no problem with eating a whale by the light of its own oil. He goes in to great, non-judgemental detail about the process of using the different parts of the slain whale. He seems, like Ishmael, to enjoy whaling and the occupation of being at sea.

On the other hand, he seems to almost worship the whale. Is it not true devotion to spend an entire chapter specifically on the spout of the whale? On the tail? It was especially in his observation of the whale community during a hunt that I felt like Melville was stuck in a very strange place where he was trying to kill the whales and love them at the same time. Pg. 347: "Like household dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time refrained from darting it"

Can someone view these whales with such a degree of affection and still appreciate the business killing them in herds, then dissecting them for their oil?

To me, Moby Dick could be read as the white ghost whale seeking revenge.

Also, a real life white whale! But not a sperm whale.