Herman Melville
Melville, Herman (1819-91), American
novelist, a major literary figure whose
exploration of psychological and
metaphysical themes foreshadowed 20th-century
literary concerns but whose
works remained in obscurity until the 1920s, when
his genius was finally
recognized. Melville was born August 1, 1819, in New York
City, into a
family that had declined in the world. The Gansevoorts were solid,
stable,
eminent, prosperous people; the (Herman's Father's side) Melvilles
were
somewhat less successful materially, possessing an unpredictable.
erratic,
mercurial strain. (Edinger 6). This difference between the
Melville's and
Gansevoorts was the beginning of the trouble for the
Melville family. Herman's
mother tried to work her way up the social ladder
by moving into bigger and
better homes. While borrowing money from the bank,
her husband was spending more
than he was earning. It is my conclusion that
Maria Melville never committed
herself emotionally to her husband, but
remained primarily attached to the well
off Gansevoort family. (Humford 23)
Allan Melville was also attached financially
to the Gansevoorts for support.
There is a lot of evidence concerning Melville's
relation to his mother Maria
Melville. Apparently the older son Gansevoort who
carried the mother's maiden
name was distinctly her favorite. (Edinger 7) This
was a sense of alienation
the Herman Melville felt from his mother. This was one
of the first
symbolists to the Biblical Ishamel. In 1837 he shipped to Liverpool
as a
cabin boy. Upon returning to the U.S. he taught school and then sailed
for
the South Seas in 1841 on the whaler Acushnet. After an 18 month voyage
he
deserted the ship in the Marquesas Islands and with a companion lived for
a
month among the natives, who were cannibals. He escaped aboard an
Australian
trader, leaving it at Papeete, Tahiti, where he was imprisoned
temporarily. He
worked as a field laborer and then shipped to Honolulu,
Hawaii, where in 1843 he
enlisted as a seaman on the U.S. Navy frigate United
States. After his discharge
in 1844 he began to create novels out of his
experiences and to take part in the
literary life of Boston and New York
City. Melville's first five novels all
achieved quick popularity. Typee: A
Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Omoo, a
Narrative of Adventures in the
South Seas (1847), and Mardi (1849) were romances
of the South Sea islands.
Redburn, His First Voyage (1849) was based on his own
first trip to sea, and
White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850)
fictionalized his
experiences in the navy. In 1850 Melville moved to a farm
near
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became an intimate friend of
Nathaniel
Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated his masterpiece Moby-Dick; or
The White Whale
(1851). The central theme of the novel is the conflict
between Captain Ahab,
master of the whaler Pequod, and Moby-Dick, a great
white whale that once tore
off one of Ahab's legs at the knee. Ahab is
dedicated to revenge; he drives
himself and his crew, which includes Ishmael,
narrator of the story, over the
seas in a desperate search for his enemy. The
body of the book is written in a
wholly original, powerful narrative style,
which, in certain sections of the
work, Melville varied with great success.
The most impressive of these sections
are the rhetorically magnificent sermon
delivered before sailing and the
soliloquies of the mates; lengthy flats,
passages conveying nonnarrative
material, usually of a technical nature, such
as the chapter about whales; and
the more purely ornamental passages, such as
the tale of the Tally-Ho, which can
stand by themselves as short stories of
merit. The work is invested with
Ishmael's sense of profound wonder at
his story, but nonetheless conveys full
awareness that Ahab's quest can have
but one end. And so it proves to be: Moby-Dick
destroys the Pequod and all
its crew save Ishmael. There is a certain streak of
the supernatural being
projected in the writings of Melville, as is amply
obvious in Moby Dick. The
story revolves around the idea of an awesome sea
mammal, which drives the
passions of revenge in one man and forces him to pursue
a course of action
which leads ultimately to his death as well as the deaths of
his companions.
There is a great deal of imagination involved in these stories
and the
creativity is highly apparent. There is an expression of belief in
the
supernatural, as the author strives to create the image of a humongous
beast in
the mind of the reader. There are no indications that Melville was
in any way
averse to fame or to the pursuit of excellence in his work. Every
author, when
writing a book, is hopeful of it's success and Melville was no
less. The Piazza
Tales (1856) contain some of Melville's finest shorter
works; particularly
notable are the powerful short stories Benito Cereno and
Bartleby the Scrivener
and the ten descriptive sketches of the Galápagos
Islands, Ecuador, The
Encantadas. Bartleby's story is an allegory of
withdrawal suggesting more than
one level of interpretation. Among them,
Bartleby may be seen as a writer (like
Melville), who chooses no longer
to write; or as a human walled off from society
by his employment on wall
Street, by the walls of his building, by the barriers
of his office nook
within the building, by the brick surface he faces out his
window, and by the
walls of the prison where he dies. Bartleby's employer, the
narrator of the
story, has several walls of his own to break out of. In his
final grasp at
communication, the narrator invites the reading that Bartleby's
life, and the
story that presents it, are like dead letters that will never
reach those
that would profit from them. He leaves us with the words, "Ah
Bartleby!
Ah, humanity!" In "Bartleby, the Scrivener", Melville
tries to relate to the
reader and explain his declining situation. This story,
on an allegorical
level represents Melville, his life, and what he wished his
reading audience
would understand about him. This is probably what he wanted,
but readers,
initially, see a melancholy story about the condition of
humanity.
Whether or not Melville is an anti-transcendentalist is a
question to be
pondered over. As such he is as focused on leaving an
impression on his readers
as any other writer on the writing block.
Therefore, I believe that Melville was
transcendental in many ways. He was a
writer who portrayed his own persona
through his writings and thus he was a
writer who had the power to be able to
express his own emotions and
experiences through his characters. This he has
accomplished by writing
stories, which had a depth, an essence of their own.
Melville was not o
much concerned with the commercial success of his works, but
that was still a
very high contributing factor to the motivation behind his
writings. Although
he mainly drew on his personal experiences while formulating
the stories that
he wrote, he greatly embellished them through his imagination
and creativity
to create literary masterpieces out of them, which are
appreciated greatly
today. Being a success meant a great deal to Melville and he
was always aware
of the fact that his books were not very popular during his
lifetime. In fact
Bartleby the Scrivener relates to this very fact through its
portrayal of a
writer, and it is greatly reflective of Melville's own private
situation. He
probably wished that his writing would be more popular among the
readers,
although he professed his own demise with Bartleby's atrophy. The
expression
of accepted failure was prevalent in Scrivener. Yet this did not
make
Melville any less desirous of fame and popularity. He still strove
to deliver
excellence in his works in any way possible. Every writer in
history has had to
find a place for himself in the mind of his readers before
reaching a level of
maturity and respect in this profession. The quality of
work is judged solely on
the readers perception of the work and nothing else.
Melville was desirous of
hitting the right cord with the readers and his
audience. He wanted to be able
to capture the attention of his audience and
leave an impact on their minds, so
that the tale would be remembered long
after it had been read. With Moby Dick,
he used the powerful tool of
imaginative fantasy to capture the attention of his
readers. The story
incorporated the extraordinary, action, adventure, revenge,
suspense...in
fact every ingredient necessary for commercial success. But it
didn't prove
to be so. The book is appreciated not as a classic work and
Melville has
received much more fame in the present time frame. In Scrivener, he
drew a
picture of a man very similar to himself. A man sick of working,
finally
declines rapidly to reach his demise. However, in Herman Melville's
'Benito
Cereno' reveals the author's disgust with Emersonian
transcendentalism through
the self-delusions of the protagonist. Cereno
personifies nature, seeing it as a
benevolent force that acts deliberately
for the good of humanity. Melville makes
it apparent that such idealism
offers no practical use in a world that is as
much evil as good, and will
likely be a burden. Cereno is Melville's strongest
example of his suspicions
for the American idealist. In this one case through
his expression of disgust
towards the idealists and their idealism, he has
portrayed the image of a
hard core idealist who is converted to a realist
through the experiences that
he goes through. This also drew on his seafaring
days as experience and he
struggled to bring across the death of the idealist
and the birth of the
realist. But at the end of the day, whatever emotions he
possessed about the
nature of idealism and idealistic thought, still form an
integral part of
him. Whether or not the reader understands the general aura of
wanting to
achieve something from his creations, yet Melville still strove to be
a
commercial success and his aim for excellence in the field of
writing
continued.