Step One:
What point are you making?
Nature is Female
Step Two: Find the Quote. (Use Google and other search engines.)
³All deified nature paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel house within.² (Whiteness of the Whale, p. 264)
Step three: Interpret and explain the quote.
³Nature takes the fiercest wild and feminine aspect in the chapter ³The Whiteness of the Whale.² The White Squall, is ³her...crowning attribute to the terrible.² The squall may be among her least palpable, but it is still hers. Melville focuses the chapter on his final metaphor-the harlot.
³All deified Nature paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel house within.²(The Whiteness of the Whale, p. 264)
This image, in all it¹s viciousness, resolves and focuses the entire work. Nature is feminine, evil, and misleading. Like a whore, she hides her ugliness with pretty colors and allurements. When viewed, she looks beautiful and attractive and fools men into her arms. Once there, however, she is a charnel house-a place of death and murder. This figure resolves even the Tashtego problem. He is drawn to whale¹s head by the beautiful smell, a one would be drawn to a whore by her perfume. Once in her arms, Nature (the dead whale head) pulls him down into the charnel house. The death of the man on watch, lured into the sea by it¹s very peace, also shows this harlotry. Even the very conclusion of the novel, as the ship sinks in the whirlpool in the midst of a beautiful day, reinforces this image of the dissembling, murderous, harlot.
Step 4: Use
of critics:
Note: Harold Bloom (in Moby-Dick: Modern Critical Interpretations) consider Chapter 42, ³The Whiteness of the Whale,² to be the ³visionary center²
Now, Included:
Nature takes the fiercest wild and feminine aspect in the chapter ³The Whiteness of the Whale.² The Critic, Harold Bloom, considers this to be the ³visionary center² not only of the novel but of all of Melvilles work. The feminine Nature is introduced with the ³White Squall² The squall is ³herŠ crowning