Herman Melville :: essays research papers

Herman Melville     In 1850 trance writing The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthornespublisher introduced him to another writer who was in the midst of a novel. Thiswas Herman Melville, the book Moby Dick. Hawthorne and Melville became goodfriends at once, for despite their various backgrounds, they had a great dealin common. Melville was a New Yorker, innate(p) in 1819, one of eight children of amerchant of distinguished lineage. His father, however, alienated all his money anddied when the boy was 12. Herman left school at 15, worked in short as a bankclerk, and in 1837 went to sea. For 18 months, in 1841 and 1842, he was crewmanon the whaler Acushnet. Then he jumped ship in the South Seas. For a time helived among a tribe of cannibals in the Marquesas. Later he made his way toTahiti where he idled away more or less a year. After another year at sea he returnedto America in the fall of 1844.     Although he had never before attempt serio us 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 nigh unknown 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 deal of Shakespeare, pondering the bards intuitive grasp of humannature. Like Hawthorne, Melville could not read the prevailing optimism ofhis generation. Un same(p) his friend, he admired Emerson, seconding the Emersoniandemand that Americans reject European ties and develop their own literature."Believe me," he wrote, "men not rattling much inferior to Shakespeare are this daybeing born on the banks of the Ohio." Yet he considered Emersons vague talkabout striving and the underlying goodness of mankind complacent nonsense.     Experience made Melville too awake of the evil in the world to be atranscendentalist. His novel Redburn ground 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 cynic 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 blue in White-Jacket.His essay The Tartarus of Maids, a moving if somewhat overdrawn description of recent women working in a paper factory, protested the subordination of humanbeings to machines.