June 27, 2019 - Chapter Forty-two (pp. 188-192)


In the remainder of “The Whiteness of the Whale,” Ishmael attempts to prove to his reader that there is an inherent terror in whiteness. He offers the examples of white waves foretelling disaster for sailors and the snow caps of the Andes mountains, and then states, “But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.”

The true piece de resistance is the final line of the chapter, however: “And of all these things the Albino Whale was the symbol.” But there have been so many things enumerated in this fairly lengthy chapter. And indeed, there is the point. If the whale and its whiteness both are things associated with radical subjectivity, then they can mean multiple things at the same time to multiple beholders. To Ahab, Moby Dick has one meaning; to any one of his crewman, Moby Dick might mean something other. To Ishmael, the whale’s whiteness is significant; to others, it might not be.

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