| He piled upon the whale's
white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race
from Adam down; and then, as if chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot
heart's shell upon it." (from Moby-Dick)
Herman Melville was born in New York City into an
established merchant family. His father became bankrupt and insane, dying
when Melville was 12. A bout of scarlet fever in 1826 left Melville with
permanently weakened eyesight. He attended Albany (N.Y.) Classical School
in 1835. He left the school and was largely autodidact, devouring
Shakespeare as well as historical, anthropological, and technical works.
From the age of 12, he worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand. In search
of adventures, he shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the whaler
Achushnet. He joined later the US Navy, and started his years long voyages
on ships, sailing both the Atlantic and the South Seas. During these years
he was a clerk and bookkeeper in general store in Honolulu and lived
briefly among the Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. Another ship
rescued him and took him to Tahiti.
Typee, an account of his stay with the cannibals, was first published in
Britain, like most of his works. Its sequel, OMOO (1847), was based on his
experiences in Polynesian Islands, and gained a huge success as the first
one. Throughout his career Melville enjoyed a rather higher estimation in
Britain than in America. His older brother Gansevoort held a government
position in London, and helped to launch Melville's career. From his third
book, MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER (1849), Melville started to experience
the unpredictable turns of popular acclaim.
In 1847 Melville married Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of
Massachusetts. After three yeas in New York, he bought a farm,
"Arrowhead", near Nathaniel Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, and became friends with him for some time. Melville had
almost completed Moby-Dick when Hawthorne encouraged him to change it from
a story full of details about whaling, into an allegorical novel.
"In general, it is the non-psychological novel that offers the
richest opportunities for psychological elucidation. Here the author,
having no intentions of this sort, does not show his characters in a
psychological light and thus leaves room for analysis and interpretation,
or even invites it by his unprejudiced mode of presentation... I would
also include Melville's Moby Dick, which I consider the be the greatest
American novel, in this broad class of writings." (Carl Jung in The
Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1967)
Inspired by the achievement of Hawthore, Melville wrote his masterpiece,
Moby-Dick. When the novel was published, it did not bring him the fame he
had acquired in the 1840s. Its brilliance was noted by some critics and
very few readers. The narrator is Ishmael, who signs abroad the whaler
Pequod with his friend Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Sea Islands.
The mood of the story changes soon from the conventions of 19th-century
comic realism. The reader is confronted by a plurality of linguistic
discourses, philosophical speculations, and Shakespearean rhetoric and
dramatic staging. Mysterious Captain Ahab, a combination of Macbeth, Job,
and Milton's Satan, appears after several days at sea. He reveals to the
crew that the purpose of the voyage is to hunt and kill the snow-white
sperm whale, known as Mody-Dick, that had cost Ahab his leg on a previous
voyage. The captain of the Pequod has his own faith and sees the cosmos in
contention between two rival deities. "Oh! thou clear spirit of clear
fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the
sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I
know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is
defiance." The novel culminates when Moby-Dick charges the boat which
sinks. Ahab is drowned, tied by the harpoon line his archenemy. In his end
Ahab takes his crew with him. The only survivor is Ishmael. - Moby-Dick
was misunderstood by those who read and reviewed it. The book can be read
as a thrilling sea story, an examination of the conflict between man and
nature - the battle between Ahab and the whale is open to many
interpretations. It is a pioneer novel but the prairie is now sea. Through
Ismael the author meditated questions about faith and the workings of
God's intelligence. He returned to these meditations in his last great
work, BILLY BUDD, a story left unfinished at his death.
For reviews
& summeries of his books, go to: |
