The White Planet

The crew tells stories of all the planets they have encountered, one of which is "white like a shroud" and "wrapped in its own death" (51). It is either one, prolonged "raging death" or "a thing that has been killed and rages to be dead" (51). The white of the planet is not a white of purity, goodness, or heaven. Rather, this was "the white at the end of the world when nothing is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future" (52).

Winterson uses the color white to symbolize nothingness, and by portraying earth-like remains in the planet's ashes, she implicitly warns that the fate of Planet White could be the fate of earth, if nothing is done to help the environment. That the color of a dead planet is white—not black, as might be expected, or red...