ck has garnered a reputation for tearing through sinners. He shows godlike justice and mercy in saving Steelkilt and killing the unjust Radney, as the crew learns from the sailors of the Town-Ho (Auden 11). Melville uses many other symbols to make the white whale a symbol of divine power (Braswell 151). His awful austere beauty is godlike, as is his titanic power and his pyramid-like white hump. His color, white, has signified a special sanctity; and Melville devotes an entire chapter, narrated by Ishmael, in which he explores the meaning of whiteness through the ages and through the eyes of many different cultures (Arvin 221-222). In Chapter LI, the Pequod sights a mysterious silvery jet of water obviously emanating from a whale. The sails are spread and the ship gives chase, but the “spirit-spout” is never identified. If this spirit-spout is emanating from Moby Dick, it is reminiscent of God’s pillar of fire in Exodus. Through these and other small clues and symbols, Melville insinuates that Moby Dick is sacred and godlike.What Melville slyly intimates with symbol he states explicitly through the mouth of an insane Shaker. When the Pequod meets the ship Jeroboam, the command of the ship is virtually in the hands of an insane Shaker who thinks he is the archangel Gabriel. Shakers were a religious sect that believed that humanity’s sin was caused by Adam and Eve’s first act of carnal sin (Guiley 137). Gabriel’s rantings reveal his beliefs that MobyDick is God incarnate (Auden 11) and predicts doom for those who hunt “his divinity” (Melville 295). Those who seek to destroy Moby Dick are destroyed by him. Harry Macey, second mate of the Jeroboam, who pursued Moby Dick is killed. Like insane Gabriel, few critics doubt that Moby Dick is a symbol for God (Buell 62). However, Moby Dick is seen as unjust and too-powerful by Ahab, suggestive of an Old Testament conception of God. Ra...
