Whether Moby-Dick is a whale or a fish is a trifling matter—what is significant about it is that it is a great “white” whale. The color white is usually connected to innocence and purity; however, in “Moby-Dick”, the quintessentially white sperm whale defies the qualities attached to its color as Ahab sees it as the archetypal evil. In a novel overwhelmingly about whaling, Melville frequently explores colors and their meanings and use them to paint a picture of characters and sceneries in the readers’ minds. Yet, he goes to the far extremes of the color spectrum to describe anything. Most of his characterization are either dark or white which seemingly leaves no room for round or “grey” characters. In his lexicon, the distinction between “white”
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When Ishmael initially meets Queequeg he observes that Queequeg’s face is “deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling in the contrast” (Melville 16). Here, darkness and whiteness are juxtaposed, making the readers feel ambivalent about Queequeg’s personality. In Melville’s time, someone who has a darker skin color would be linked with lower socioeconomic class because it was assumed that their skin was tanned from excessive labor. Not only that, a dark skin color would put one in an equal footing as a marginalized African-American slave. Looking at the “blackness” of Queequeg, readers might assume that he is an uncivilized, foul, and demonic character. Meanwhile, Queequeg also has white teeth which insinuates that he takes good care of his hygiene. Such depiction goes against the aforementioned presumption of him and makes the reader doubt that he is a total savage. The readers are faced with a kaleidoscopic range of qualities in a character and must depend on the narrator to appraise whether Queequeg is “good” or “bad”. Therefore, when Ishmael goes through multiple observations of Queequeg’s harpoon, tattooes, and actions to conclude that Queequeg is to be feared, the readers safely surmise that he is an evil flat character and construct a barricade of antipathy towards him. Yet, the barricade is demolished too soon when Ishmael finds that he had slept soundly next to him in almost a matrimonial manner (Melville 27). In just a few pages, Ishmael's opinion on him shifts drastically from a downright negative to a qualified positive. The change in depiction of the two characters damages the narrator’s credibility and perplexes the reader about what kind of a character Queequeg is because a seemingly flat character has suddenly become a round character in the hands of the swaying narrator. However, Melville does all this intentionally; Queequeg is described with predominantly dark colors
When Ishmael initially meets Queequeg he observes that Queequeg’s face is “deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling in the contrast” (Melville 16). Here, darkness and whiteness are juxtaposed, making the readers feel ambivalent about Queequeg’s personality. In Melville’s time, someone who has a darker skin color would be linked with lower socioeconomic class because it was assumed that their skin was tanned from excessive labor. Not only that, a dark skin color would put one in an equal footing as a marginalized African-American slave. Looking at the “blackness” of Queequeg, readers might assume that he is an uncivilized, foul, and demonic character. Meanwhile, Queequeg also has white teeth which insinuates that he takes good care of his hygiene. Such depiction goes against the aforementioned presumption of him and makes the reader doubt that he is a total savage. The readers are faced with a kaleidoscopic range of qualities in a character and must depend on the narrator to appraise whether Queequeg is “good” or “bad”. Therefore, when Ishmael goes through multiple observations of Queequeg’s harpoon, tattooes, and actions to conclude that Queequeg is to be feared, the readers safely surmise that he is an evil flat character and construct a barricade of antipathy towards him. Yet, the barricade is demolished too soon when Ishmael finds that he had slept soundly next to him in almost a matrimonial manner (Melville 27). In just a few pages, Ishmael's opinion on him shifts drastically from a downright negative to a qualified positive. The change in depiction of the two characters damages the narrator’s credibility and perplexes the reader about what kind of a character Queequeg is because a seemingly flat character has suddenly become a round character in the hands of the swaying narrator. However, Melville does all this intentionally; Queequeg is described with predominantly dark colors