Herman Melville’s reputation was immediately established in 1846 with the publication of his first novel, Typee, yet for the most part he lived in near-seclusion and died in relative obscurity for a man of his talents. He wasn’t fully appreciated until the 20th century. The conservative religious Americans of his day didn’t trust him: his unorthodoxy regarding religion, his South Seas travels, his cynicism, his bitter criticism of the hypocrisy of missionaries, and his satires of religion and religious figures made him an outcast. Today, however, some critics claim that only the Russian writer Dostoyevsky is his equal among 19th century writers.

 

Melville was born in NYC, and his father and grandfather both died when he was thirteen. Their deaths meant Melville’s education was interrupted, for he had to help his mother feed eight children. At seventeen, he became a merchant seaman, sailing first to Liverpool, where the sexual activity at the docks at first shocked him but then opened up a new world for him, for he was attracted to men. At age twenty-one, he sailed to the South Pacific. Four novels came from this experience: Typee, Omoo, White Jacket, and Mardi. Melville was not always happy as a seaman. In fact, he disliked life on his South Pacific ship so much that in the Marquessas, he and a shipmate hid in the jungle until they were sure their ship had departed. They were taken captive for a while by natives but escaped. These adventures became the basis for Typee. Melville and his friend then signed on with an Australian whaling ship, and the adventures aboard this ship were the basis of Omoo.

 

Although scholars now believe Melville to have been homosexual, he married in 1847 and settled in NYC where he began turning his strange memories of his South Seas adventures into compelling literature. Philosophically, the strength of his early novels is his disdain for the white man trying to force civilization onto a people who were blissfully happy without it. He particularly objected to the indoctrination of religion. He was familiar with Rousseau’s ideas concerning the “noble savage,” and he portrays those ideas powerfully in these early novels.

 

The American edition of Typee was bowdlerized; the removal of “offensive” passages by the publisher upset Melville. And his third novel, Mardi, was so harshly received by critics that Melville--who like Hawthorne was a sensitive person--was deeply wounded and never fully recovered. Hawthorne, at least, liked Typee and said it had depths “that compel a man to swim for his life.”

 

Melville moved from NYC to the countryside to write Moby Dick, which he published in 1851. The novel is an adventure story and a tale of revenge, but it is also an audacious experiment. Melville’s narrator says at one point, “I try everything. I achieve what I can,” and that exemplifies Melville’s approach. The smallest object, the smallest detail, can yield great secrets. But again, upon publication, Melville was savaged by the critics. Some saw the book as a failed adventure narrative, others viewed it as a nonsensical philosophical work spoiled by a fish story, but almost none seemed to understand that within its pages Melville was attempting to understand the nature and meaning of life and the universe. All great artists who attempt this fail. Moby Dick turns up many truths, but never the ultimate truth, and that is the only outcome that would have made a comfortable resolution. Just as Ahab in the story is obsessed with the great whale, Moby Dick, Melville the writer is obsessed with the meaning of life. There is allegory and symbolism throughout, and it’s a difficult read. Ahab determines to be the captain of his fate but at times feels like he’s following fate’s orders. In Moby Dick, Melville questions whether the universe operates under a vast determinism, but he never answers the question. When he finished it, Melville was exhausted and claimed not to care what anyone thought of it, though in reality he cared a lot. The reaction was so harsh that from the publication of Moby Dick in 1851 until about 1938, Melville was not afforded much respect among scholars.

 

In 1852, Melville published Pierre, which is autobiographical in its anatomy of the despair Melville was feeling at the rejection of Moby Dick. Pierre was scandalous for its day, almost as if Melville were thumbing his nose at society. As literature, it was a failure. Melville was now only thirty-two but considered a failed writer. His next story was refused for publication, so he retired and lived in relative obscurity for the remainder of his days. When he died, however, he left Billy Budd, which some critics think the equal of Moby Dick. Never had Melville written a more effective plea for humanity, told a better story, or written a novel with more homoeroticism.

 

When we read Melville, some autobiographical knowledge is useful. We have to remember our author as a man who gave up society to sail to the ends of the earth, knowing it would be easier to seek the meanings of life if one were not in the midst of things but instead viewing life from a port hole or a crow’s nest. Once among the savages, he cut his life line to his old life and allowed himself to be made captive in order to understand his captors. He was enthralled not only by the South Pacific but by Asia as well. He valued the misfortunate to a point that makes him something of an American Dickens. Too, he was always intent on tackling the larger questions even if his art suffered because he could not pull his stories together with easy resolutions. His books are philosophy, psychology, mysticism, cosmology, and adventure story. Fate befuddled him. He compared it to striking a row of billiard balls--only the one at the farthest end shoots forth, though it was never directly struck. And that, thought Melville, is our lives. He came to believe while writing Moby Dick that good and evil are dependent on each other. His analogy was, “The light is greater, hence the shadow more.”