The Symbolism and Significance of the Whale in Literature

Introduction

One of the clearest and most commanding symbols in literature is the whale. The whale is mythic, appearing as everything from an inscrutable terror to an awe-inspiring beauty and a source of great wonder. The mystery of such a creature—so vast as to inhabit the entirety of the ocean, moving with grace through the deepest waters and leaving no trace behind—is almost as engaging for the reader as for the sailor. It makes an appearance in a diverse selection of books and genres, whether in an epic novel, in storybooks, or in the form of simple allusions in science fiction and fantasy.

Sometimes, the presence of a whale in these stories is, of course, centered on creating pathos—the shadowy deeps in which the whale lurks provide the perfect place to lose a character, a ship, or a life.

Whales have been turned into a symbol for whatever it is that writers would like to see them as—a canvas upon which they paint their meanings and beliefs. By reading into the many ways perceived by different authors and across multiple cultures, we can draw some conclusions about the whale and why it is such a powerful symbol in literature. We will find that while the whale is, at root, a normal animal like any other, the way in which it has been mythologized over the centuries by humans, especially sailors, is evidence of the deep and inextricable connection that people already felt to it. While whales seem at first to be exclusively the province of mariners now long dead and gone, we will see that in the end, the stories they tell are ones that have touched every life. Besides all this, the symbolism of the whale is significant in and of itself. Individual authors mean as much or as little as one personally takes from them.

Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Numerous societies provide varied ways of understanding the whale as symbols or mythic figures, creatures, or subjects of narrative itself. Notably, nineteenth-century literary representations of whales had long historical and cultural roots and antecedents, reaching deep into actual events and tales, and ancient beliefs and stories. The work and its sources offer a fertile ground from which to explore these dimensions. Whaling made fiction of Wawonah and other real-life whalers' encounters with whales. Giving these events in the novel a cultural dimension that echoes made it more comprehensible. An overview of societies' interactions with whales demonstrates how these interactions are reflected in literature and other cultural representations.

In very early societies where written records are not available, we see a coexistence of the symbolic and experiential dimensions to the perception and stories of the whale. Recorded texts from ancient times showed that societies viewed these animals as powerful symbols, having their own spiritual and mythic significance. Early peoples viewed whales in terms of gods or agents of the transcendent as entities that helped create the earth, and who pursued and swallowed humans as retribution for some real or imagined wrongdoing. Yet as well as being significant from a symbolic aspect, these animals were indeed 'actual' creatures that were and are the object of experience, of 'awe,' mystery, myth, and daily life as an important source of life support and danger.

The Whale as a Metaphor

Whales and whaling represent, perhaps more than any other animal, the problematic and paradoxical relationship between nature and culture, between the explicitly human world we have made and that which we generally call "the environment" outside that world. Whales are both beautiful and dangerous, and people cannot seem to decide which aspect of their true nature is more important.

In literature, whales can be at once Moby Dick and the failing marriage of Ishmael. They are awe and terror. Whales are the Swedish Captain Nemo dining alone at the bottom of the sea and Quoyle's cousin waving from the Canadian north. The whale is both part of the natural order and completely indifferent to the human order. In this way, whales are Thoreau's water and Bennett's prehensions. The big picture. They are Odin's ravens.

Whales are not just large and beautiful fish floating in the sea. Whales mean something beyond—even around and within—their size and intelligence, but something that is clearly bound up with these details of size and intelligence. The whale is thought to be closer than anything else alive to the god-like because it approaches the unknowable (what is it like to be a whale?) and because of the great size and intelligence, or intelligence-like conning, of the creature. During the Enlightenment, the concept of the sublime drew strongly from the idea of the whale, connecting these two previously disparate groups. The connection is made where the whale is described as one of the most overpowering and frightening forces in nature. It is noted that the natural cause of the emotion is not, as it has been represented, any quality of greatness in the thing gazed at or feared, but the substratum of empowered intelligence or deity within the thing.

Whales and Environmentalism in Modern Literature

Though people today continue to draw on and reimagine the symbolic meaning of the whale, in most of these recent works, the whale does not tap as directly into a system of significant meaning; indeed, the whale continues to be used in large part as an environmental symbol. Since the 1960s, especially in the popular imagination, the whale has frequently been taken as a symbol of many different and shifting ideas, including the beauty and immensity of the ocean, the remarkable intelligence or consciousness of certain marine animals, and as a reminder of the pervasiveness and power of human environmental degradation. Indeed, a large segment of these recent whale texts is driven less by plot than by environmental advocacy: a call for the preservation of majestic animals for their own sake or a depiction of the rising tide of disaster that threatens all members of the global ecosystem.

Each of these works taps into and expands upon the whale’s potential as a signifier of wonder, beauty, or monstrosity; but in their case, the intent is often more local and politicized than the environmentalist works discussed above. The reader is asked to wonder at the damage oceanic injury brings to the polities of these little novels, horror either at the potential social consequences of environmental destruction or at the animal and human lives (and loved ones) destroyed in large-scale ecological disasters. The narratives of climate fiction can galvanize us to act: to force not only to consider the aesthetic beauty of existent life, but also to think about the world we would pass on to our children, if not spaceships that never stop.

Conclusion

The whale’s untold significance across Eastern and Western cultures and its mysterious existence have allowed it to become a symbol in myth, religion, and literature. The controversy about whether it is a monster or a natural creation has embodied the conflicting thoughts in human society for centuries and symbolizes the fact that universal principles are often a matter of interpretation. The whale, as a symbol, does not simply illustrate multifaceted meanings, but more significantly, it has often been seen as being beyond meaning, as a signifier of signifiers.

Indeed, the symbolization of a whale in literature, which has spanned millions of years from myth to contemporary postmodernism, suggests that this figure is not simply part of history, but cuts through and beyond history; this legacy is long and enduring. Some of the symbolic uses of this animal from various cultures and ages have been argued in this essay. The discussion of the whale has also offered us valuable tools for reflecting on the many ways in which stories might be told, different ways of understanding the work of literature, and its effects. We may never be able to offer a definition of what the whale symbolizes in literature, but what has become clear through this exploration is that it certainly does mean something to those who read about it. Given future societal changes and new discourses, it may even come to symbolize something different one or two hundred years from now. It is a figure that continually re-inscribes an ever-developing social vision, and for this reason, it certainly will continue to be an important figure for literary studies.

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