. . . .In the chapter entitled "The Whiteness of the Whale," Ishmael defines his own early fear of Moby Dick and thereby reveals what motivated him to take his fateful voyage.  It is the color of the whale--or rather, the "absence of color"--that terrifies the youth:  "by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation."   Put simply, Ishmael is afraid of death; or rather, he is afraid of being "annihilated" by death.  His lack of a strong faith in life beyond death is revealed much earlier in the novel when he is in the chapel looking upon the monuments to sailors lost at sea.  There, too, he associates "voids" with death:  "What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes!  What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnawupon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave."   In the "Whiteness" chapter, then, he notes that white is "the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind,"particularly the prospect of infinite "blankness" after death, which would make life meaningless.  Because of the atheistic despair he finds reflected in the color white, he wonders at how "strange and . . . portentous" it is that white is used as "the most meaning symbol of spiritual things . . . the very veil of the Christian's Deity."   This comment calls attention to Ishmael's criticism of Christianity and rejection of the Christian God, and yet, he cannot accept the tragedy involving the Great White Whale as proof of there being no ruling force in the universe--atheism is not a choice for a man so afraid of death.  In his characterization of Ishmael, then, Melville creates a representative man:  fearful of annihilation, he looks for a God who will save him from it; and if he finds none that suit him, or when tragedy leaves him doubtful of the power of this God, he creates another.  Through his narrative, he "colors" the White Whale with his ideal of a supreme God.  Unwilling to accept "nothing," Ishmael writes on this blank slate; he creates a meaning for the whale that gives his own life meaning as it provides him with hope of resurrection after death.  He begins his "inscription" by renaming himself, and now the reader might see the positive side of his choice of appellation: as Sten reminds us, Ishmael's name translates, "'God shall hear.'"  Thus, "the biblical Ishmael was more than an outcast or rejected son; he was also one whose name contained the promise of divine redemption." . . .