Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Melville as a Sailor(not so accustomed to the brutal life)• Merchant vessel to England• Whaler Acushnut bound for Pacific

(deserted ship at Nuku Hiva)• Nuku Hiva---guest and captive of cannibals

(Typee)• Escaped on another ship to Tahiti• Enlisted at Honolulu for service aboard US

naval vesselTotal Years at Sea = 4

“Dollars damn me.”

• Became friends with Hawthorne and often was irritated that his success didn’t last

• Novels became less about physical adventure (which Americans liked) and more mental adventures (which bored Americans)

• Self-examination and mental examination (transcendental) didn’t pay the bills

Like Transcendentalists

• Melville sought evidence of human spirit in nature

• Found division and disunity--- “however beautiful the sunlit surface of the ocean, sharks and other terrors still swim in the dark depths.”

• Ineradicable evil in all existence haunted Melville’s imagination

Typee• Fictionalized account

of his life at Nuku Hiva (Tahiti)

• 1st modern novel of South Sea adventure

• Well-received by Americans; success

• New perspective on changing culture in America

Typee

Miseries of civilized life• Advantages in society

= hundred evils in reserve

• Pg. 274 (2nd column)– How he really feels

about civilized society

Happiness of Typee tribe• No Western

consciousness of time• No value of memory• No anticipation of future• Joys of life spread

around all (constant variety of enjoyment)

• Dignified• No sickness

VS.

Who are the “savages” of the world?

Cannibals Western Society

Moby Dick

• About his experiences on a whaling ship• Adventure story became deep-diving

exploration of the mysteries of human nature and “tragedies of human thought.”

• NOT A SUCCESS

• Overall, Melville was not seen as an influential American writer until the 1920s when scholars revisited his works

1. How is Ahab characterized physically and mentally? Consider various perspectives…Ishmael, Starbuck, Queequeg, Stubb, Ahab himself through thoughts and actions.

2. How does Ahab view various elements of nature (ambivalent, indifferent, etc.)? How are his views contradictory with regards to these elements?

Questions to Consider from Moby Dick

Self-Reliance Gone Mad• Pg. 277---physical descrip.• Pg. 278--- inner conflict• Pg. 280---mental descrip.

Pg. 281--- “Who’s over me? Truth has no confines.”

• Pg. 283---”forehead to forehead”

• Pg. 284---”Against the wind” & “I misdoubt me…”

• Pg. 287---gloats;

• Ahab sees nature as a symbol of some spiritual truth, though for him, this truth is unknowable. Can man really ever truly understand the complexities of the mysterious universe?

• Suffers deep inner conflict and aloneness• Struggling to recognize the “truth” within

– Destructively feeding on himself to perpetuate himself

– Battling reason and intuition

“God-complex”?

• Ahab acknowledges god and the god within himself & uses this to rationalize his madness

• “Only one god in the sky and only one captain of this ship.”

• Sees himself as the messiah (messenger of god; savior who is on a crusade)– Plans to purge the world (seas) from evil/sins

Nature

• Pg 281---Starbucks view of nature (foreshadowing)

• Pg. 283---Ahab’s view of nature (ambiguous)

• Pg. 287---whale’s actions & “Moby Dick seeks thee not…” or does he?

• In The Chase---Third Day, Melville lets the reader see the chase of Moby Dick through the eyes of Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, and the whale. This reinforces idea of relativism–Perspective makes ambiguous the

question as to whether the forces of nature are good or evil

Perspectives on Truth

• Ahab---”Truth has no confines”…,but perhaps it does. By what might his truth be confined?

• Ishmael---Truth is living within the limitations of our human understandings & coming to terms with our own mortality

• Melville---deep dangers in trying to establish meanings for God, humanity, and nature

• Seekers of absolutes deceive themselves. We live in a neutral universe that has “meaning” only in our human perceptions, and historical actualities are our only guides to truth– Truth is relative to its pursuer