Timothy Welsh
PLS 481 – Weinfield
December 6, 2001
The Whiteness of the Book
In Moby Dick, Herman Melville attributes to the color white a special ability to
resist interpretation.
Or is it, that in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of
color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; it is for these reasons that
there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows – a
colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?
Whiteness, it seems, portends all meaning, while at the same time meaning nothing at all.
This “colorless, all-color of atheism” leaves one ill at ease, unable to accept the nothing
or to find a conclusive interpretation. One is left with an irresolvable ambiguity as to the
essence of the whiteness and, thus, must default to “atheism.”
Though the whiteness described in the novel describes the whale, the feeling of
ambiguity extends outside the narrative to the reader. While the novel tells a symbolic
story about a quest for a whale named Moby Dick, the novel itself is Moby Dick. Part of
Melville’s genius lies in his ability to create symbols that the reader can interpret in
various ways at once, and thus resist interpretation. As a result, the reader searches to
capture Moby Dick, or find a unified meaning, to no avail, confounded by the perfectly
constructed ambivalence of the text.
Melville plays with the reader when he asks the audience to use “human
reasoning” when judging his story and not read it as a “hideous and intolerable allegory.”
Later on, he warns the reader not to “be too fastidious in your curiosity” about the whale,
since such curiosity is unlikely to be satisfied. However, the human urge to apply
meaning is too strong. Most readers come up with some system that organizes the whale,
Ahab, Ishmael, and the other characters and events into some easily digestible pattern. At
the same time, various other systems could also apply. Thus, it is the reader of the novel,
who provides the “all-color” of a story written so ambiguously that it is essentially
“colorless.” As Melville comments, through the voice of Stubb, a book provides only
words, while the reader creates the meaning, “Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books
must know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to
supply the thoughts” (361).
Thus, the book does not generate meaning on its own, but merely supplies facts,
which lend themselves to various interpretations. In this light, Moby Dick cannot be read
as a “hideous and intolerable allegory,” as is so often the case. Instead, one must
recognize the multiple searches for meaning and identification at play, including the one
within the reader’s own mind. At the same time, it is tempting to suggest that Melville
has left nothing more than an intriguing story.