“The Moby Dick,” or “The Whale” is at the center of Melville’s work. This outstanding novel is an excellent example of American romantic prose. It depicts the protest between romantic thought and bourgeois-capitalist progress through symbols, and Moby Dick, a snow-white whale, is one of them. As a novel’s central image, this animal depicts humans’ tragic fate so miserable that it tortures their minds and hearts.
Melville chose Moby Dick to embody his symbolic meaning because the whaler novel is perfect for the expression of a philosophical concept. When reading the novel, the reader’s attention is focused on the very important problems of environmental ethics that exist today. It is with the help of the giant whale and the enmity between him and Ahab, that the author shows the classic example of the conflict “man against nature.” At the same time, Melville does not consider whaling exceptional in its cruelty. With the help of such an image as a whale, the author shows that, despite the scale of killing this animal as a crime, it is only one in a series of everyday human activities, some of which are more horrible.
When the novel was analyzed in the critical literature, scholars made many attempts to interpret the whale’s image. The interpretation is difficult because there is no common one as every crew member sees him in a different way in comparison with others. For instance, Ahab sees the whale as the world’s absolute evil putting “the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down” on him (Melville, 1851, p. 192). At the same time, for Ahab, Moby Dick is the projection of the man’s consciousness with evil as its element. Thus, Ahab’s ideas and images that exist in his objective reality are projected on the sperm whale. This is due to the fact that Ahab’s incomprehensibility and misunderstanding of the world not only worries, but also brings torment, filling him with more and more hatred and malice.
The novel describes the despair of a human soul that was cut off from the rest of the world and thrown into a deep ocean of despair filled with fears and doubts. Therefore, the ocean in the novel is something created beyond the Earth, it is its dark side. The ocean symbolizes the complexity of life with its fears and emotions. It unites the universe, society, and people in their communication and interaction with each other. At the same time, the Pequod’s multinational crew is a symbol of humanity that prevails over all difficulties of the life ocean. Moreover, the ocean acts as proof in favor of the fact that the whale is part of nature. That is why when people attempt to kill the whale, they show disrespect to God and His creations. The white color of the sperm whale is combined with the blue color of the ocean, which resembles the colors of Christ’s clothes.
The fear of sailors related to the whale’s whiteness is also associated with death and ghosts. In addition, a sperm whale’s color was chosen by the author as a symbol of nature that is indifferent and may symbolize both Evil and Good. However, this colorlessness as the combination of all colors that destroys them is the main thing that terrifies sailors. It is “in essence, not a color, but the apparent absence of any color” (Melville, 1851, p. 91). As there is a monstrous indifference in the whale’s appearance, there is no beauty or ugliness in him. Thus, by choosing the white color, Melville allows readers to make their own choice and determine for themselves whether the whale is a positive or negative character.
The whiteness of the whale is particularly intriguing to Ishmael since it simultaneously assumes a number of mutually exclusive meanings, and the possibility of no meaning at all. He tries to understand why whiteness, being “a meaningful symbol of the spiritual principle and even the true cover of the Christian Deity,” at the same time “serves to aggravate the horror in everything that frightens the human race” (Melville, 1851, p. 100). Other characters also have a worshipful fear of the whale’s whiteness.
In the novel, Moby Dick is a perfect symbol of beauty and terror at the same time associated with the universe’s mysteriousness. Whiteness presents Moby Dick as a huge and fantastically powerful symbol of Good. However, he may be perceived as a terrible creature for the same reason. For a person’s consciousness, whiteness is itself nothing, however, everyone sees different things in it based on attitudes, emotions, fears, and perceptions. Thus, if for a reader Moby Dick is a symbol of nature and the universe, then through the confrontation of this animal with people the author shows an extremely cruel picture of the world. There is neither Good nor Evil in the universe, there is no higher rational moral force governing human life and death.
Reference
Melville, H. (1851). Moby Dick. Harper & Brothers. Web.