June 26, 2019 - Chapter Forty-two (pp. 183-187)


This chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” is one that receives a large proportion of critical attention, particularly regarding the matter of radical subjectivity and the role it plays in the novel. After meditating for a bit on the positive connotations of whiteness, Ishmael turns to the negative, offering two notable examples: “Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are?”
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Among the more curious aspects of the chapter is the lengthy footnote on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (which can be read here). Wondering how a white bird could betoken such evil as Coleridge depicts in the poem, Melville offers a truly Wallace-esque footnote on the topic.

A final point before continuing to the subjectivity of whiteness: Ishmael asks us to consider albino animals and their terrible appearance: “this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion.” Is the albino mouse or rat more hideous than their naturally colored littermates? I would say that, in this case, Ishmael is mistaken, although beauty is in the eye of the beholder – which is sort of the point.

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