Herman Melville An AntiTranscendentalist Or Not Essay free essay sample

Herman Melville: An Anti-Transcendentalist Or Not Essay, Research Paper Melville, Herman ( 1819-91 ) , an American Novelist, is widely regarded as one ofAmerica # 8217 ; s greatest and most influential novelists ; known chiefly as the writer of MobyDick. He belonged to a group of high pre-Civil War writers-American Romantics ormembers of the American Renaissance-who created a new and vigorous nationalliterature. He is one of the noteworthy illustrations of an American writer whose work wentlargely unrecognized in his ain clip and died in obscureness. American novelist, a majorliterary figure whose geographic expedition of psychological and metaphysical subjects foreshadowed20th-century literary concerns but whose plants remained in obscureness until the 1920s, when his mastermind was eventually recognized. Melville was born August 1, 1819, in New York City, into a household that haddeclined in the universe. The Gansevoorts were solid, stable, high, comfortable people ; the ( Hermans Fathers side ) Melvilles were slightly less successful materially, poss essing anunpredictable. fickle, erratic strain. ( Edinger 6 ) . This difference between the Melvillesand Gansevoorts was the beginning of the problem for the Melville household. Woody hermans mothertried to work her manner up the societal ladder by traveling into bigger and better places. Whileborrowing money from the bank, her hubby was passing more than he was gaining. Itis my decision that Maria Melville neer committed herself emotionally to her hubby, but remained chiefly attached to the well off Gansevoort household. ( Humford 23 ) AllanMelville was besides attached financially to the Gansevoorts for support. There is a batch ofevidence refering Melvilles relation to his female parent Maria Melville. Apparently the olderson Gansevoort who carried the female parent # 8217 ; s inaugural name was clearly her favourite. ( Edinger 7 ) This was a sense of disaffection the Herman Melville felt from his female parent. Thiswas one of the first symbolists to the Biblical Ishamel. In 1837 he shipped to Liverpool as a cabin male child. Upon returning to the U.S. hetaught school and so sailed for the South Seas in 1841 on the whaler Acushnet. After an18 month ocean trip he deserted the ship in the Marquesas Islands and with a companionlived for a month among the indigens, who were man-eaters. He escaped on board anAustralian bargainer, go forthing it at Papeete, Tahiti, where he was imprisoned temporarily. Heworked as a field labourer and so shipped to Honolulu, Hawaii, where in 1843 he enlistedas a mariner on the U.S. Navy frigate United States. After his discharge in 1844 he beganto create novels out of his experiences and to take portion in the literary life of Boston andNew York City. Melville # 8217 ; s first five novels all achieved speedy popularity. Typee: A Peep atPolynesian Life ( 1846 ) , Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas ( 1847 ) , andMardi ( 1849 ) were love affairs of the South Sea islands. Redburn, His First Voyage ( 1849 ) was based on his ain first trip to sea, and White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War ( 1850 ) fictionalized his experiences in the naval forces. In 1850 Melville moved to a farm nearPittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became an confidant friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, towhom he dedicated his masterpiece Moby-Dick ; or The White Whale ( 1851 ) . The cardinal subject of the novel is the struggle between Captain Ahab, maestro of thewhaler Pequod, and Moby-Dick, a great white giant that one time tore off one of Ahab # 8217 ; s legsat the articulatio genus. Ahab is dedicated to avenge ; he drives himself and his crew, which includesIshmael, storyteller of the narrative, over the seas in a despairing hunt for his enemy. The bodyof the book is written in a entirely original, powerful narrative manner, which, in certainsections of the work, Melville varied with great success. The most impressive of thesesections are the rhetorically brilliant discourse delivered before seafaring and the soliloquiesof the couples ; drawn-out flats, transitions conveying nonnarra tive stuff, normally of a technicalnature, such as the chapter about giants ; and the more purely cosmetic transitions, suchas the narrative of the Tally-Ho, which can stand by themselves as short narratives of virtue. Thework is invested with Ishmael # 8217 ; s sense of profound admiration at his narrative, but nonethelessconveys full consciousness that Ahab # 8217 ; s quest can hold but one terminal. And so it proves to be: Moby-Dick destroys the Pequod and all its crew save Ishmael. There is a certain run ofthe supernatural being projected in the Hagiographas of Melville, as is richly obvious in MobyDick. The narrative revolves around the thought of an amazing sea mammal, which drives thepassions of retaliation in one adult male and forces him to prosecute a class of action which leadsultimately to his decease every bit good as the deceases of his comrades. There is a great trade ofimagination involved in these narratives and the creativeness is extremely evident. There is anex pression of belief in the supernatural, as the writer strives to make the image of ahumongous animal in the head of the reader. There are no indicants that Melville was inany manner averse to fame or to the chase of excellence in his work. Every writer, when composing a book, is hopeful of its success and Melville was no less. The Piazza Tales (1856) contain some of Melville’s finest shorter works;particularly notable are the powerful short stories Benito Cereno and Bartleby theScrivener and the ten descriptive sketches of the Gal pagos Islands, Ecuador, TheEncantadas. Bartleby’s story is an allegory of withdrawal suggesting more than one level ofinterpretation. Among them, Bartleby may be seen as a writer (like Melville), who choosesno longer to write; or as a human walled off from society by his employment on wallStreet, by the walls of his building, by the barriers of his office nook within the building, bythe brick surface he faces out his window, and by the walls of the prison where he dies.Bartleby’s employer, the narrator of the story, has several walls of his own to break out of.In his final grasp at communication, the narrator invites the reading that Bartleby’s life, andthe story that presents it, are like dead letters that will never reach those that would profitfrom t hem. He leaves us with the words, â€Å"Ah Bartleby! Ah, humanity!† In â€Å"Bartleby, the Scrivener†, Melville tries to relate to the reader and explain his decliningsituation. This story, on an allegorical level represents Melville, his life, and what hewished his reading audience would understand about him. This is probably what hewanted, but readers, initially, see a melancholy story about the condition of humanity. Whether or not Melville is an anti-transcendentalist is a question to be ponderedover. As such he is as focused on leaving an impression on his readers as any other writeron the writing block. Therefore, I believe that Melville was transcendental in many ways.He was a writer who portrayed his own persona through his writings and thus he was awriter who had the power to be able to express his own emotions and experiences throughhis characters. This he has accomplished by writing stories, which had a depth, an essence of theirown. Melville was not o much concerned with the commercial success of his works, butthat was still a very high contributing factor to the motivation behind his writings. Although he mainly drew on his personal experiences while formulating the storiesthat he wrote, he greatly embellished them through his imagination and creativity to createliterary masterpieces out of them, which are appreciated greatly today. Being a successmeant a great deal to Melville and he was always aware of the fact that his books were notvery popular during his lifetime. In fact Bartleby the Scrivener relates to this very factthrough its portrayal of a writer, and it is greatly reflective of Melvilles own privatesituation. He probably wished that his writing would be more popular among the readers,although he professed his own demise with Bartleby’s atrophy. The expression of acceptedfailure was prevalent in Scrivener. Yet this did not make Melville any less desirous of fameand popularity. He still strove to deliver excellence i n his works in any way possible. Every writer in history has had to find a place for himself in the mind of his readersbefore reaching a level of maturity and respect in this profession. The quality of work isjudged solely on the readers perception of the work and nothing else. Melville wasdesirous of hitting the right cord with the readers and his audience. He wanted to be ableto capture the attention of his audience and leave an impact on their minds, so that the talewould be remembered long after it had been read. With Moby Dick, he used the powerfultool of imaginative fantasy to capture the attention of his readers. The story incorporatedthe extraordinary, action, adventure, revenge, suspense†¦in fact every ingredient necessaryfor commercial success. But it didnt prove to be so. The book is appreciated not as aclassic work and Melville has received much more fame in the present time frame. In Scrivener, he drew a picture of a man very similar to himself. A man sick ofworkin g, finally declines rapidly to reach his demise. However, in Herman Melville’s’Benito Cereno’ reveals the author’s disgust with Emersonian transcendentalism throughthe self-delusions of the protagonist. Cereno personifies nature, seeing it as a benevolentforce that acts deliberately for the good of humanity. Melville makes it apparent that suchidealism offers no practical use in a world that is as much evil as good, and will likely be aburden. Cereno is Melville’s strongest example of his suspicions for the American idealist. In this one case through his expression of disgust towards the idealists and theiridealism, he has portrayed the image of a hard core idealist who is converted to a realistthrough the experiences that he goes through. This also drew on his seafaring days asexperience and he struggled to bring across the death of the idealist and the birth of therealist. But at the end of the day, whatever emotions he possessed about the nature ofidealism and idealistic thought, still form an integral part of him. Whether or not the readerunderstands the general aura of wanting to achieve something from his creations, yetMelville still strove to be a commercial success and his aim for excellence in the field ofwriting continued.