Response Journal Week 4 - Gabriel

I thought the whiteness of the whale was a very interesting chapter because of the paradox that Ishmael presents. Ishamel writes, “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (page 159). He later goes on to explain that the whiteness appalled him because white is such a smooth, powerful, awe-inspiring color, and when white is coupled with something terrible that thing becomes all the more terrible. Although Melville is a bit racist in this chapter, I find what he says about the color white to be very accurate, and it makes me wonder how something as simple as a color can become so complicated, and so deeply-associated with feelings, and ideas.

On page 169 Melville writes, “[Ahab’s soul] being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the franctic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral.” I thought that this passage was very interesting for a few reasons. For one thing, I really liked the imagery of Ahab’s soul desperately trying to escape from his mind when he was sleeping. I also thought it was interesting that Ahab’s soul seemed to be more normal than his mind, and I wonder if Melville, in writing this passage, is trying to show that Ahab still has a regular soul, and that he is therefore not fully a madman. I also found it interesting how on page 177 Ahab realized that he needed to chase after all whales in order to make a profit, and therefore keep his crew happy. He knew that he needed to keep his crew happy because they were the tools he would use to kill Moby Dick. What was interesting about this is that Ahab is portrayed as being insane, yet he is still very smart, and tactical in the way he approaches capturing Moby Dick. He still knows how to conduct day-to-day business and how to track whales, so it seems as if his insane when it comes to the big picture, but actually quite sane when it comes to little, day-to-day things.

On page 196 Ishmael writes, “Whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us”(196). I found this so interesting because Ishmael has been a starch advocate for whaling for the whole first part of the book but now he really starts to question why men whale. It is very dangerous, and he writes that one must be a practical fatalist to go on a whale ship because there is always a good chance that one will die. He seems to think that one should only go whaling if one doesn’t have anything to lose, and from what Ishmael has said about himself, it seems that Ishmael has nothing to lose. The fact that Ishmael questions whaling shows how he has finally had a reality check and realizes how what whaling actually entails.