In many natural objects, whiteness refines and enhances beauty, as in pearls, or confers special qualities such as innocence or purity. There is an elusive quality that causes the thought of whiteness to heighten terror, such as the white bear of the poles or the white shark of the tropics. Among humans, the Albino is considered shocking and loathed, while the whiteness of a corpse is a distinguishing and disturbing feature. In its most profound, idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul. White is portentous because it is indefinite, not so much a color as the visible absence of color. Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. I will show how Ahab and Ishmael view the whiteness of the whale as a symbolic evil and force of life, one that has to be eradicated.
             Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening. Whiteness conveys both a lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby Dick is the pinnacle of whiteness, and Melville's characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale. This is why Ahab feels that Moby Dick represents everything that is evil. He doesn't understand. That's why he feels he has to kill him.
             In many natural objects, whiteness refines and enhances beauty, as in pearls, or confers special qualities such as innocence or purity. There is an elusive quality that causes the thought of whiteness to heighten terror, such as the white bear of the poles or the white shark of the tropics. This is the symbol that the whiteness portrayed to Ahab and Ishmael. Although Moby Dick was a gorgeous pearl white in color, that beauty represented some sort of impurity that deserved punishment.
             Ahab's downfall is this. His mind is so entangled with killing Moby Dick that he doesn't realize that even if he does, he will not have abolished all of the evil in the wo...