Herman Melville Research Paper

Whale University Herman Melville led an adrift life of uncertainty and emptiness prior to his composition of Moby-Dick in 1851. Similar to the nautical course of the Pequod, Melville was pushed back and forth between odd jobs that ultimately ended in dissatisfaction and failure. In a last effort to capture “the ungraspable phantom of life” (Melville 3) that can only be found in the ocean, Melville boarded a merchant ship as a crew member and found himself instantly bound to the blue abyss. Just as Melville’s prior schooling yielded nothing but unemployment, Ishmael claims that Yale or Harvard would have generated less relevant proficiency than a whaling adventure. Additionally, Melville found himself caught in a love triangle consisting of Nathaniel

His blank identity, like the white whale who claims the title of this “giant Shakespearean prose poem” (Lydon), drifted among the waves of life with no clear destination and no discernable purpose but to float. Perhaps it was for this reason that Melville developed a love for savage islanders after deserting his ship in the Marquesas Islands in 1842 (Norton). These cannibals led simple lives in which all inhabitants lived equitably and, subsequently, contained analogous identities. Moreover, Melville and Ishmael alike sought a strong male figure to dominate them: Hawthorne and Queequeg respectively. Likewise, the duo were also unable to develop an identity alone. For example, Ishmael describes himself as an active member of the regal whaling community to strengthen his “identity”: “For like royal kings of old times, we find the headwaters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves” (Melville 386). Herman Melville’s malleable disposition compelled him to create an even more moldable, governable character faced with the impossible: to conquer the greatest and most dangerous force on earth: