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Biography
Herman Melville's father was a New York City merchant who,
when he died suddenly, left his family heavily in debt. Melville
was only twelve at the time, but he was forced to leave school
to go to work. After a variety of jobs in his teens, Melville
joined a whaler sailing for the South Seas in 1841. On that
trip, Melville and a crewmate jumped ship and lived for several
weeks with a native tribe; upon his return to America, Melville
transformed that experience into Typee (1846), a popular
adventure tale that established him as a literary celebrity.
A sequel, Omoo, soon followed, but Melville's appeal
was dampened by his more philosophical works such as Mardi (1849), Pierre (1853),
and even Moby-Dick (1851). Critics of these novels
declared Melville unbalanced, and Melville had to struggle
to regain the economic and critical popularity he had enjoyed
with his earlier writing. After Pierre, he primarily
wrote short stories for magazines like Harper's. Financial
concerns burdened the family for years, but an inheritance
late in life allowed Melville to work on his final masterpiece, Billy
Budd, Sailor. Only after his death did Melville rise
from the ranks of second-rate adventure novelists to his
present status as one of the most important American writers.
Explorations
The Moby-Dick excerpts in NAAL are selected
to give you an experience of the novel's energy, intellectual
reach, and array of compelling characters. Published in 1851,
this freewheeling narrative was all but forgotten at the
time of Melville's death forty years later. But generations
of modern novelists have looked to it as a milestone in the
liberation and expansion of American fiction and the achievement
of a lively vernacular style on the printed page, a style
that still resonates with democratic values and aspirations. 1. Read chapters I, X, and XVI, and describe Ishmael's
personality and how his mind seems to move and work. As
he moves through his experiences, what appeals to him?
What is his attitude toward big value systems--religious,
cultural, intellectual, political? Do you find him a plausible
human being? Why or why not?
2. Look over the variety of crew members whom Ishmael
introduces in the "Knights and Squires" chapters (XXVI
and XXVII). Without worrying about the symbolic or allegorical
significations of any one of these characters or the whole
group, talk about them as a cast of characters in a drama,
an adventure story, or a speculation about human nature.
3. In chapters XLI and XLVI ("Moby-Dick" and "The Whiteness
of the Whale"), Ishmael offers us insight both into Ahab's
obsession with Moby-Dick and into how that obsession spreads
among the crew of the Pequod. Is there logic to
Ahab's thinking? Do you regard him as a Romantic? As an
existential hero? As a madman? How can we explain the hold
which his rhetoric and thinking seem to have over so many
of the crew?
4. Hundreds of pages have been published about symbolism
in this novel. Rather than decode the symbols again, can
you talk about Moby-Dick as being "about" a wish
to read the world symbolically, to find signs and meanings
in worldly experience? In other words, do Ahab's and Ishmael's
symbol hunting and symbol finding tell us something about
their temperaments, intellectual and psychological habits,
and core beliefs?
Other sites to consult:
The
Life and Works of Herman Melville. Features
a wealth of information about Melville and his works.
Includes links to several biographies; online texts;
a forum; a bibliography; contextual essays on his
relationships; criticism; and more.
Herman
Melville. An extensive bibliography, overview
of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, an assessment
of Melville's life and work, and study questions.
From the PAL: Perspectives in American Literature site
maintained by Paul P. Reuben (California State University,
Stanislaus).
http://www.melville.org/: A site concerning
the life and works of Melville.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=240&CFID=9020342&CFTOKEN=13372336:
Melville information from the Academy of American Poets.
http://www.reeseco.com/papers/melville.htm: An essay
on collecting works by Herman Mellville.
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/melvillebio.html:
A biography of Melville from Brandeis.
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