Response Journal Week Four - Mayumi

I can’t help but discuss the magnificent chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale.” Ishmael builds example upon example of the grand and terrifying or beautiful nature of things that are white: pearls, wampum, imperial colors (intercontinentally), horses, flames, an albatross, the hue of death, a mysterious fog, a White Friar/White Nun, and even people (to Melville), to name a few. The profound effect white has upon humans is its enhancing effect – it almost alters one’s senses to enhance the terrifying or beautiful nature of the white object. It has the power to invoke the sublime and speak directly to the soul. Humans are so intimidated by this color because it isn’t a color; it is the absence of color, or even to some the absence of life. Melville mentions enormous white expanses, such as thick fog and snow, and their effect on people to exemplify this point. The terrifying part of these expanses is its lack of color; color marks familiar landmarks in life, we feel out of place and uncomfortable.
These white symbols kept appearing after Chapter 42, mainly in “The First Lowering” and “The Albatross.” In “The First Lowering,” the white imagery appears towards the end, when after hunting in white waters for the whales, the small boats are engulfed in mist and return without a whale. In the “Albatross,” the Pequod encounters a ship of the same name, which Melville describes as “bleached like the skeleton of a stranded” and having a “spectral appearance” (195). The captain loses his trumpet and the shoal that were following the Pequod begin to follow the Albatross. From these events, it seems as though almost everything associated with the color white is followed by bad luck (the mist and no whale, the Albatross and the loss of a trumpet and fish, and the Moby-Dick and Ahab’s leg). If Moby-Dick is the embodiment of the challenges Ahab faces, it would make sense that other things associated with the color white are also followed with challenges or misfortune.
The elevation of Ahab’s madness in contrast to his awareness of his need to keep control builds off of the last week’s reading. These two aspects of Ahab’s being are in such contention that he can viscerally feel the conflict; the pain is both emotional and physical. The pain is so unbearable that he crucifies himself (the text is unclear as to whether he does so symbolically or literally with his fingernails). Ahab’s monomania in conflict with his awareness that he must not let the skeptical (Starbuck) rebel also causes a split between his mind and his soul. Melville writes: “The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, 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 frantic thing, of which for the time, it was no longer an integral” (169-170). True separation between mind and soul does not exist while Ahab is conscious, however in his sleep, his soul tries to escape, as it perceives that it is not integrated into the rest of his being.