The whiteness of the whale in Moby Dick symbolizes universal evil

The argument

In Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”, the White Whale represents and embodies all evil in the world. This stance is reinforced throughout the entirety of the novel, most frequently by the monomaniac Ahab, intent on revenge against the White Whale. In fact, it is clear even from Ahab’s first mention of the titular whale, that the whale is to symbolize universal evil. In describing the whale, Ahab states, “He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.” The narrator, Ishmael, also discusses Ahab’s stance on the White Whale just pages later: “He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down…” And still, the sentiment of the White Whale’s embodiment of malice is not held solely by Ahab. For Ishmael, the whale is abhorrent by the very nature of its whiteness. In Chapter 42 “The Whiteness of the Whale”, he states: “…and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.” And although Ishmael and Ahab are given most of the dialogue/narrative in the novel, many of the other characters echo similar sentiments regarding the whale. In several of the gams throughout the novel, in particular with the Jeroboam, characters who only appear for their respective chapters echo such beliefs regarding the malice of the whale. These meetings with other ships most often offer differing perspectives than solely those of the Pequod. In the gam with the Jeroboam, for example, a member of their crew warns Ahab of the dangers of pursuing the White Whale and likening it to an incarnation of the Shaker God. Throughout the entirety of the novel, the whale is alluded to as not only a malicious creature, but as the embodiment of evil itself. Although the White Whale has come to represent many different things, and symbolizes slightly different things to individual characters, it is clear that the whale is meant to represent that “inscrutable malice” that Ahab sees in it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The chapter the argument leans on says close to the opposite of what it is cited for. In 'The Whiteness of the Whale', Ishmael's terror is not that white signifies evil but that it signifies nothing — an emptiness, a blankness behind appearances, whiteness as the absence of colour and therefore of meaning. That is a meditation on indefiniteness and the void, and it is the passage most often read as evidence that the whale resists any single allegorical reading. Quoting it as proof of universal evil takes the chapter's title and reverses its argument. The attribution problem runs through the rest. Nearly every phrase offered comes from Ahab or from Ishmael reporting Ahab's state of mind — 'inscrutable malice', the sum of rage piled on the hump. The novel presents that projection as monomania and dramatises its cost: Ahab's insistence on reading a personal enemy into an animal destroys his ship and everyone aboard except the narrator, who does not share the reading. Treating a character's obsession as the book's symbolism ignores what the book does to the character. The Jeroboam example works against the argument too. Gabriel's warning likens the whale to an incarnation of a god, which is the rival position in this question — the whale as inscrutable higher power — not a testimony to universal evil. And the closing sentence concedes the case. Granting that the whale 'has come to represent many different things' and 'symbolizes slightly different things to individual characters' is the third position in this question: that the whale does not represent anything singular. The argument states that reading and then declines it in favour of Ahab's.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The phrases cited are Ahab's, or Ishmael's report of Ahab's state of mind, and the novel frames that projection as monomania whose consequence is the destruction of the ship and everyone aboard but the narrator — so the premise evidences what a character believes rather than what the novel establishes. [Rejecting P2] Chapter 42 is cited against its own argument: Ishmael's horror is that whiteness signifies emptiness and the absence of meaning rather than evil, which is the passage most often read as showing the whale resists a single allegorical reading; and Gabriel's likening of the whale to a god's incarnation supports the rival position of an inscrutable higher power. [Rejecting C] The argument's own closing concession — that the whale has come to represent many things and means something different to each character — is the third position in this question, that the whale symbolises nothing singular, which the conclusion states and then sets aside.