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Herman Melville's Influence Of Mobby Dick And Moby-Dick

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Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 into a wealthy family. In 1832 the death of his father led his family into poverty which caused Melville to leave school. After leaving school Melville began working immediately to support his family. Then at the age of 22 Melville set sail aboard a whaling vessel, and after his time as a whaler he enlisted in the navy. Melville’s time aboard many ships influenced his writing tremendously. His friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne also influenced him to write a masterpiece of American literature and one of the greatest novels of all time, Moby-Dick. A major theme of Moby-dick is sexuality. Melville does not hold back when discussing homoerotic and sexual topics in the novel. Nonetheless the intense language used in the novel helped it become such a remarkable and well -known novel today. Herman Melville’s influences for Moby-Dick along with the homoerotic themes found in Moby-Dick leads many scholars …show more content…

At the time Melville began to draft Moby-Dick he moved to a house in Massachusetts near Hawthorne (“Moby Dick”). Within their first encounter both men instantly bonded (Levine 66). Their quick friendship led to a delay in writing Moby-Dick. “His delay in submitting it was caused less by his early-morning chores as a farmer than by his explorations into the unsuspected vistas opened for him by Hawthorne. Their relationship reanimated Melville’s creative energies” (Maxwell). Unfortunately, the relationship between them did not last very long. The cause of the falling out was most likely brought about because of Melville attraction and admiration for Hawthorne.“It is possible that Melville sought to initiate an affair that Hawthorne declined” (Litz and Weigel 249). Although the men were no longer friends this did not stop Melville from dedicating Moby-Dick to Hawthorne and concluding the novel with letters to

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