Albinism in Culture: Literature
The Genetic Condition of Albinism Has a Long, Inhuman Literary Past
When Noah was born, his father Lamech feared him; believing he was “the offspring of the angels.” The ark builder was born with skin white like snow and red as a rose, and long white hair, as related in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
Dr. Arnold Sorsby, writing in the British Medical Journal in 1958, offered a different diagnosis: “In the light of this fragment the account of Noah's appearance at birth…is clearly not that of a miraculous child but of an albino.” (1)
Science enlightens, but the genetic condition of albinism as expressed in literature, lives on in our shared imagination, like the Great Flood, epitomizing the old definition of mythology of things that never happen, but always are.
Albinism as symbolic connection to the other world is a cornerstone of Western culture: Zeus incarnates as a white bull, and in Revelation (verse 1:14) the presumed traits of albinism sanctify Jesus’ return: “His head and his hairs were white like wool…and his eyes were as a flame of fire.”
Through the centuries, similar traits echo in characters in tales of the Arthurian legend (the white hind with red ears) and in German fairy tales (the Hostile Mountain Spirit).
Portuguese traders coined the word “albino” (now considered derogatory) in the 17th century to describe Africans with albinism, forging a connection between the condition and human beings.
Herman Melville crystallized the human response to albinism in his 1851 novel Moby Dick, which chronicles Ahab’s maniacal quest for the white whale that took his leg. In Chapter 42 "The Whiteness of the Whale," Ishmael, the book’s narrator, expounds on albinism (which he calls the “colorless all-color of atheism”) in people.
“What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin…this mere aspect of all pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?” (2)
Few answers were forthcoming from Melville’s America, where people with albinism were often exhibited as freaks. Moby Dick, however, anchored albinism’s use as a symbol of evil, giving succeeding writers a motif for creating appalling villains.
Albinism infuses evil in many famous novels (see list below) whose villains are often self-loathing prodigies whose albinism drives the action and necessitates their demise.
H.G. Wells’ eponymous Invisible Man is an evil genius whose albinism seems to make his invisibility even more dangerous. “One could make an animal a tissue transparent!...I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realizing what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming.” (3)
The villain of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Jamaica Inn is a white-haired priest, hunted after abducting the heroine, Mary Yellan, to whom he confesses “Yes, I am a freak in nature and a freak in time. I do not belong here, and was born with a grudge against the age, and a grudge against mankind.” 4
Sometimes, the use of albinism is comic, as in Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre, where Pluto tells Ty Ty that “these all white men who look like they are made out of chalk or something” can divine for gold. Or sublime, as with the banjo-playing savant in James Dickey’s Deliverance.
Not every albinism portrayal is negative: Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve (1954) dramatizes in sad, stark detail the social and emotional isolation experienced by a family of a child with albinism in rural India.
The most famous recent character with albinism is the cloaked and stalking monk Silas in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code who kills four people in one night doing God’s work.
Today, we know about albinism, but these references suggest that part of our brain still responds to the condition like Noah’s father; if not in a belief in angels, than an awareness of that endarkening fear of otherness that writers both literary and commercial continue to tap.
References:
- Sorsby, Arnold “Noah An Albino?” London: British Medical Journal, December 27, 1958. Pages 1587-1589.
- Melville, Herman, Moby Dick, Chapter 42 “The whiteness of the Whale.” New York: Modern Library, 1992. Page 276.
- Wells, H. G. The Invisible Man, Chapter XIX. New York, Dover Publications, Inc. 1992. Page 66.
- Du Maurier, Daphne, Jamaica Inn, Chapter 17. New York: Pocket Books, 1936. Page 224.
Albinism in Literature: 20 Famous Novels
Herman Melville, Mardi (1848)
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man (1897)
Erskine Caldwell, God’s Little Acre (1933)
Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn (1936)
Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve (1954)
Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1955)
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1966)
James Dickey, Deliverance (1970)
Peter Benchley, The Island (1979)
Franklin Dixon, The Infinity Clue (1981)
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides (1986)
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989)
Ernest Hebert, Live Free or Die (1990)
Frank DeFelitta, Funeral March (1991)
Ben Okri, The Famished Road (1991)
Ken Kesey, Sailor Song (1992)
Elizabeth Arthur, Antarctic Navigation (1995)
Stephen Hunter, Pale Horse Coming (2001)
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, (2003)
