Moby-Dick Questions Ch. 42: What is Moby Dick to Ishmael

What is Moby Dick to Ishmael?  Why does the whiteness of the whale so appall him, and why does he need to explain his views of the whale, “else all these chapters be naught?”  (205 [159])   What exactly does Moby Dick look like?  What color is it?  Read the last paragraph carefully.  What reasons does Ishmael give for why the color white is “the intensifying agent in things most appalling to mankind”?  How is the method of this chapter exemplary of the method of the novel, in terms of rhetoric and epistemology?