Herman Melville (1819-1891)

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

― Herman Melville

Generally ignored in his own time and almost forgotten in the years after his death, Melville has since then emerged as one of the giants of American literature.

“So God created the great sea monsters…the fifth day.” ---Genesis

Brief Biography• Born in NYC• Son of a wealthy merchant, but he lost his business in

1830 and died in 1832• Upon death of father, Melville’s family in extreme debt –

spends his childhood working as a clerk, farmhand, and teacher

• Age 19 – Melville becomes a sailor, spends a brief period of time in the Navy in the South Seas which sparked his creative juices

• Befriended NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE – greatest influence

• 1841 – in Tahitian Jail and became greatly embittered at the mistreatment of native Polynesian people by the colonists and missionaries

• NEVER recognized as a great writer until DEATH…not until 1920’s did his novels become icons of Amer. Lit.

Themes in Hawthorne and Melville

• Romantic concern with good and evil– Hawthorne: Puritan ancestry – Melville: ships

• Responded differently– Hawthorne: positive– Melville: negative

Darker Romantics

**D.R. shares characteristics with other Romantics but more pessimistic view

• Authors: (Hawthorne), Melville, Edgar Allan Poe • View of Man: moral struggle with evil; feelings and

intuition; dark interior• View of God: good v. evil; sin and its psychological

effects on people • View of Nature: evil found in setting and symbol;

often the supernatural • View of Society: must be reformed

Themes

• Man=maker of own identity– must accept inability to fully know power of

universe– must know own mortality– must know need for fellow man and capacity for

love of humankind

Two great archetypes in American literature1. Ahab---a tragic figure who dares to seek and challenge the supernatural power while knowing that he is doomed to die.

2. The white whale---the symbol of nature both good and evil as the color indicates.

Moby-Dick

• The novel on the whole can be understood from three levels:1. It is a novel of journey and whale catching2. It is a conflict between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick3. It is a story of Ishmael, his thought about human’s

ego realization, the relationship between man and nature, man and God, man and man, etc.

Character List

• Ahab - The egomaniacal captain of the Pequod. Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick. He is single-minded in his pursuit of the whale, using a mixture of charisma and terror to persuade his crew to join him. As a captain, he is dictatorial but not unfair. At moments he shows a compassionate side, caring for the insane Pip and musing on his wife and child back in Nantucket.

Character List• Ishmael - The narrator, and a junior member of the

crew of the Pequod. Ishmael doesn't play a major role in the events of the novel, but much of the narrative is taken up by his eloquent, verbose, and extravagant discourse on whales and whaling.

• Moby Dick - The great white sperm whale. Moby Dick, also referred to as the White Whale, is an infamous and dangerous threat to seamen, considered by Ahab the incarnation of evil and a fated nemesis.