Melville Essay Research Paper A ReflectionOn Melville

Melville Essay, Research Paper

A Reflection

On Melville’s

Accomplishments

Brad Jones

Ms Carman

Period 6

American Literature

Mellville

“As an author Melville both courted failure and scorned success.”(pg. 613, A

Companion to Melville Studies). How many famous legends in time have existed to

know no fame. How many remarkable artist have lived and died never receiving due

credit for there work. Herman Melville is clearly an artist of words. Herman Melville is

certainly a prodigy when it comes to writing. Herman Melville never received hardly any

credit for any of his works. Melville wrote such novels as Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd.

Melville wrote about things that he knew about. He wrote about his own experiences.

The one thing that he loved, and knew the most about was whaling.

Herman Melville was born in 1819, the son of Allan and Maria Melville. He was

one of a Family of eight children – four boys and four girls – who was raised comfortably

in a nice neighborhood in New York City. Herman Melville came from a famous blood

line out of Albany, NY. Melville’s grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, was a hero.

Even though the General died six years before Melville was born, Melville still put him

in his book, Pierre.

On the outer side of the blood line there was Major Melville. The Major was a

wealthy Boston merchant who was one of the famous “Mohawks” who boarded the ship

of the East India Company that night of 1773, and dumped the cargo in to the Boston

Harbor. Later Major Melville became the Naval Officer of The Port of Boston, a post

given to him by Gorge Washington. It is like the two blood lines fitted together perfectly

to create Herman Melville. Herman had the strength of the General, and the crazy hart

of the Major.

Herman Melville was “hardly more than a boy” when he ran out to sea after his

fathers death. A young Melville sighed up as a boy on the St. Lawrence to Liverpool and

back to New York. Many of the events that show up in Melville’s Redburn are actuarial

events that happened of his first voyage. After returning home and finding his mothers

family fortune gone, Melville decided to take a journey over land this time to the

Mississippi river to visit his Uncle Thomas. Through out all of Melville’s work the image

of inland landscapes, of farms, prairies, rivers, lakes, and forest recur as a counterpoint to

the barren sea. Also in Moby-Dick Melville tells how he was a “Vagabond” on the Erie

Canal, which was the way Melville returned.

Melville wrote that it was not the lakes or forest that sank in as much as the

“oceanic vastness and the swell of the one and in the wide, slow, watery restlessness,”(pg.

Arving), of the prairies. Some even think of the novel, Pierre, as a “A prairie in print,

wanting the flowers and freshness of the savanah, but all most equally puzzling to find a

way through it.” (Pg. 1, On Melville.) About a year latter Melville signed up as

foremasthand on the whaler Acushnet, which set sail on the third of January, 1841, that

set sail from New Bedford. Many events of his voyage directly correspond with those in

his novel, Typee.

Melville set up residence in the Taipi-Vai valley, which he called Typee. He and

a friend, named Toby Green, struck out on one day’s leave to the interior of the island.

Melville got sick and had to live with a tribe of savages that he found for a month or so.

All this time, Toby had gone to try to get help but was unsuccessful. After a long month

of waiting for Toby, Melville decided to try to escape, and was successful. Melville

illustrated all of these events that happened in his novel Typee. But “Typee is a work of

the imagination, not sober history, and one constantly crosses in it the invisible line

between “fact” and the life of the fancy and memory.”(pg. 61, Arvin)

After Melville’s escape he sighed up on a ship called Lucy Ann. Melville still had

a bad leg from his experiences with the natives. This journey was a short one but none

the lass eventful. The journey was full of different changes in command and mutiny.

These events on the , Lucy Ann, Melville put in to a book he named Omoo. This journey

ended in Tahiti.

After a while in Tahiti, Melville decided to join the crew of the Charles and

Henry. When the Charles and Henry got to the Hawaiian island of Maui the Captain

Coleman discharged him. The events on the Charles and Henry were also to be put in to

text. Melville put this leg of his journey in a novel named Mardi, which Hawthorn

described as, “With depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his

life.”(Hawthorn)

A month after Melville’s arrival in Hawaii, Melville signed on as a crew member

in the US Navy, on board the United States. He sailed on her for fourteen months. On

board the United States Melville got to see Lama, “the city of king’s,” which Melvil

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