moby dick
...ry well. Ishmael is immediately uneasy about meeting Queequeg, but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a "sober cannibal than a drunken Christian" for a shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of anger among shipmates, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of whaling changes the other s men’s activities—buffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with wealthier peoples—that characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of the Pequod's mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask stands on Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order to beat the other mates to a prize whale. On a live whale, only the outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine what is in the whale's skin, or which part—skeleton, blubber, head—offers the best understanding of the entire animal. Overall, as the whale swims, it hides much of its body underwater, away from human site, and no one knows where it goes or what it does. The sea itself is the greatest frustration in this way: its depths are mysterious and Ishmael haves no way of reaching them Whiteness - Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos, creatures that live in extreme and harsh environments, waves breaking against rocks. Whiteness conveys both a lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby Dick is the devil of whiteness; nobod...