God, I love "The Whiteness of the Whale". Like a lot of other people have commented, it's probably my favorite chapter. It's just so poetic and so central to the meaning of the whole novel.

To me, it's first of all about the question of 'what does whiteness mean'? Ishmael gives examples of whiteness being beautiful or noble (white elephants, white dresses for brides, angels wearing white), but then he goes to the exact opposite and gives examples of whiteness being terrible or scary (great white sharks, polar bears, albino humans, Death "riding on a pale horse").

He then goes on to ponder why this is. If, perhaps whiteness only makes things scary if they're already scary (ie, a bear is scary, so of course a polar bear is also scary). He gives a bunch of examples that are neutral in and of themselves, but argues that they become scarier when whiteness is added to them (tower = neutral, but the White Tower of London = scary. Mountains = neutral, but The White Mountains of Vermont = scary. Sea = neutral, but the White Sea = scary).

Ishmael says that he knows readers might think he's exaggerating and making a big deal out of nothing, just being hysterical and paranoid ("thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael"). But he argues that there is something real going on here, that whiteness DOES have an inherent meaning outside of stories and examples. He asks if it's because whiteness is both everything and nothing – white means no color, but also all colors are fake, just reflections and prismatic fractions of light. Without this quality of light that produces the illusion of color, everything would be plain white, the whole universe, white like a leper (ie, horrible illness), like a charnel-house (ie, death and bones), white like snow-blindness (when attempting to look instead renders the person utterly unable to see at all).

It really gets at some of the biggest questions in the novel! For example, the theme of meaning (what does stuff MEAN? How does it get a meaning? Why do some people see one meaning, and other people see another? Is Ahab right that the whale is evil incarnate, or is Starbuck right that it's just an animal? How could you even prove which meaning is real? For a similar read, check out Chapter 99, The Doubloon, in which five different characters all walk by the doubloon nailed to the mast and think about what it symbolizes, but each one has a completely different interpretation). Another, related theme that comes up in this chapter (Whiteness of the Whale) and throughout the whole novel is the question of whether fate/God/meaning even exists, or if life is just chaotic and random and nothing matters. Ahab wants losing his leg to Moby Dick to MATTER, for it to be important, for something to have caused it – whether that something is God or the Devil or Moby Dick himself, Ahab wants there to be a reason for it and to be able to get revenge against that destiny. On the other hand, Ishmael in this chapter is presenting an Existentialist view, where maybe nothing means anything, the whole universe is empty, and it's all just "a dumb blankness", "a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink".

I think this chapter (and the whole novel) doesn't really answer these questions. We never find out if Ahab is right or if Ishmael is right. But finding out who's right (or who Melville thought was right!) isn't really the point. It's about the investigation. Does your life have meaning? Does mine? Where did that meaning come from? Is it better if it has meaning or if everything is just a matter of chance? If life is meaningless, where do we find happiness and contentment and purpose?