Herman Melville :: essays research papers

Herman Melville     In 1850 while make-up The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthornespublisher introduced him to another writer who was in the center of a novel. Thiswas Herman Melville, the al-Quran Moby Dick. Hawthorne and Melville became goodfriends at once, for despite their dissimilar backgrounds, they had a great dealin common. Melville was a New Yorker, born in 1819, one of eight children of amerchant of distinguished lineage. His father, however, lost alone his money anddied when the boy was 12. Herman left school at 15, worked briefly as a bankclerk, and in 1837 went to sea. For 18 months, in 1841 and 1842, he was skimmeron the whaler Acushnet. Then he jumped ship in the atomic number 16 Seas. For a time helived among a tribe of cannibals in the Marquesas. later on he made his way toTahiti where he idled away nearly a year. After another year at sea he returnedto the States in the fall of 1844.     Although he had never before at tempted effective writing, in 1846 hepublished Typee an account of his life in the Marquesas. The book was a greatsuccess, for Melville had visited a part of the world almost inglorious toAmericans, and his descriptions of his bizarre experiences suited the taste of aromantic age.     As he wrote Melville became conscious of deeper powers. In 1849 he begana systematic pick out of Shakespeare, contemplate the bards intuitive grasp of humannature. Like Hawthorne, Melville could not accept the predominate optimism ofhis generation. Unlike his friend, he admired Emerson, seconding the Emersoniandemand that Americans reject European ties and jump their own literature."Believe me," he wrote, "men not very a lot inferior to Shakespeare are this daybeing born on the banks of the Ohio." insofar he considered Emersons vague talkabout striving and the inherent uprightness of mankind complacent nonsense.     Experience made Melvil le too aware of the criminal in the world to be atranscendentalist. His novel Redburn based on his adventures on a Liverpoolpacket, was, as the critic F. O. Matthiessen put it, "a study in disillusion, ofinnocence confronted with the world, of ideals shattered by facts." YetMelville was no faultfinder he expressed deep sympathy for the Indians and forimmigrants, crowded like animals into the holds of transatlantic vessels. Hedenounced the brutality of discipline in the United States Navy in White-Jacket.His essay The Tartarus of Maids, a moving if somewhat overdrawn description ofyoung women works in a paper factory, protested the subordination of humanbeings to machines.