Herman Melville A Biography And Analysis Essay Example For Students

Herman Melville: A Biography And Analysis Essay Herman Melville: A Biography And AnalysisThroughout American history, very few authors have earned the right tobe called great. Herman Melville is one of these few. His novels and poemshave been enjoyed world wide for over a century, and he has earned hisreputation as one of the finest American writers of all time. A man of toweringtalent, with intellectual and artistic brilliance, and a mind of deep insightinto human motives and behavior, it is certainly a disgrace that his truegreatness was not recognized until nearly a generation after his death. Born in the city of New York on August 1, 1819, Melville was the thirdchild and second son of Allan Melvill(it wasnt until Allans death in 1832 thatthe e at the end of Melville was added, in order to make a more obviousconnection with the Scottish Melville clan), a wholesale merchant and importerthen living in comfortable economic circumstances, and of Maria GansevoortMelvill, only daughter of the richest man in Albany, the respected andwealthy General Peter Gansevoort, hero of the defense of Fort Stanwix during theAmerican Revolution. In total, Allan and Maria had eight children. On his fathers side, his ancestry, though not so prosperous as on his mothers, was equallydistinguished. Major Thomas Melvill, his grandfather, was one of the Indiansin the Boston Tea Party during the events leading to the war and who had thenserved his country creditably throughout the hostilities. The Melvill familykept on their mantelpiece a bottle of tea drained out of Major Melvills clothesafter the Te a Party as a momento of this occasion. Herman attended the New York Male High School from about the age ofseven until 1830. By that time, Allan Melvills business had begun to fail, dueto his credit being overextended. After futile attempts to re-establish himself,he eventually found it necessary to accept the management of a New York furcompany back in Albany. The family moved there in the autumn of 1830, and duringthat time Herman attended, along with his brothers Gansevoort and Allan, theAlbany Academy. Just as luck seemed to again be favoring the Melvills, Allansbusiness affairs again suffered a setback. Excessive worry and overwork finallytook their toll upon his health. By January, 1832, he was both physically andmentally very ill. On January 28, 1832, Allan Melvill died. The shock of hisfathers financial collapse and his tragic death only slightly more than a yearlater took its toll on Hermans emotions. He was to draw upon this memory twodecades later in his writing of Pierre. In order to support the family, Herman took a position as an assistantclerk at a local bank, and his brothers Gansevoort and Allan took over theirlate fathers fur business. Possibly because of his mothers concern over hishealth, Herman left his position at the bank in the spring of 1834 and spent aseason working for his Uncle Thomass farm near Pittsfield. During the winter months of early 1835, Herman left Pittsfield andjoined his brothers in the fur business. Now fifteen and a half, he kept thebooks of the firm for the following two years. At some time during this periodhe enrolled as a student in the Albany Classical School. He also became ammember in the Albany Young Mens Association, a club for debating and reading,of which his brother was already a member. Such clubs, in absence of publiclibraries, were popular in many cities and served a most useful educationalpurpose. Within a year or two of education at the Albany Classical School, hehad become qualified as a school teacher. He left his brothers at the nowfailing fur company and became a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse outside ofPittsfiesd. On his first day of the new job, the inexperienced teacher wasconfronted with thirty students of all ages and levels of skill. Some were hisage, and a few utterly illiterate. In such extreme conditions Herman found ithard to maintain discipline, let alone teach. After six weeks, he gave up andreturned to Albany. For a few months, Herman looked for work without success. His leisurehours, though, were filled with excitement. Early in 1838 he organized adebating club and promptly got into a dispute over the presidency of the clubwith a rival member, which he eventually won. Before long, Maria Melvill was forced to admit that she could no longerafford to live in Albany. Faced with the prospect of having to constantly askher brother Peter for money, she finally decided to move her family toLansingburgh, a village not far from Albany near the Hudson River. Herman was in a difficult and unhappy position. Although he was almosttwenty years old, he was not contributing to the familys income and feltashamed. At the same time, he was unable to decide on a career or event settledown to a job. Perhaps because he remembered the stories of his uncle and twocousins who had gone to sea, Herman decided to try his own fate at sea. He askedhis brother Gansevoort to look for a ships berth for him, and almostimmediately, he was hired as a crewman aboard the St. Lawerence, a three mastedship that was preparing to cross the Atlantic from New York City to Liverpool,England. Shakespearean Comedies: Comparisions and Contrasts EssayMelville, eager to see the family he missed so, returned to Lansingburghwhere his mother still resided. His family was fascinated with his glorioustales of his journeys at sea; so much so that Hermans brother Thomas set sailhimself. Unfortunately, Herman was in the same situation in which he was beforethese adventures unemployed. He believed that if he put his stories on paper,he would find a publisher, and the vexing question of his career would beanswered he would become a writer. As he sat in his mothers house to write his first novel, Melvilleturned to the part of his South Seas adventure about which everyone was mostcurious: his stay among the cannibals. The story was his own, certainly, butin writing Typee, Melville established a habit that would follow throughout hiscareer. Hi used his own experiences as the skeleton of the book and fleshed outthe details with his own imagination. In Typee, he wrote about his escape from awhaling vessel with Toby, and renamed the ship the Dolly rather than theAcushnet. He also changed their departure, which in reality he was never in anyreal danger, to one of great heroics as they escaped from a horrible fate. Inaddition, he lengthened their stay on the island from four weeks to a gruelingfour months. He did find a publisher, and Typee, his first book, was publishedin 1846. The following year, Melville met and fell in love with a woman namedElizabeth Shaw, and they were married on August 4, 1847. They bought a home inNew York City, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Togetherthey would have two sons, Malcolm and Stanwix, born in 1849 and 1851,respectively. Also born to them were two daughters, Elizabeth and Frances, in1853 and 1855. In 1851, the same year as the birth of his second son, Melville has hismost famous work published, Moby Dick, or, The Whale. Between the release ofTypee and Moby Dick, Melville wrote other books of lesser notoriety. Omoo (1847),a book about his stay in Tahiti; Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), about his timespent in Liverpool, and White Jacket (1850). Moby Dick, as most people know, is the story of Captain Ahab and hisquest, which eventually becomes and obsessive monomania, to kill the great whitewhale Moby Dick. Today, Moby Dick is universally recognized as both Melvillescrowning achievement and a towering classic of American literature. The verything that bothered so many people when it was published the fact that itbroke the rules of writing and did so with such gusto is now seen as thesource of its power. Today, writers who mix genres or who create unique voicesand styles are admired. Thus Moby Dick is now regarded, not as a failed searomance or mixed up adventure story, but as a triumph of creative imagination,an example of how vast and all-embracing a book can be. Along with Mark TwainsHuckleberry Fin and Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass, Moby Dick is considered acandidate for the greatest American novel. However, as aforementioned, hisgreatness was not recognized at this time. Melvilles later works, Pierre (1852), The Piazza Tales (1856), TheConfidence Man (1857), the poem Clarel (1876), and the post-mortumouslypublished Billy Bud (1924), went almost completely unnoticed until the early1920s, when a student of literature named Raymond Weaver approached theMelville family and was given permission to examine the papers Herman leftbehind in a tin box after his death. It was here Billy Bud was first discoveredand later published, which introduced a whole new generation to Melvilles work. Soon critics, students, and the general public were reading his novels andstories, and greeting some of them as masterpieces. In 1927, American novelistWilliam Faulkner declared that Moby Dick was the book he most wished he hadwritten. Knowing the quality of his work, one can not help but feel sympatheticto Melvilles passing. He died on September 28, 1891 in his home in New YorkCity, still unknown by the general public. If any writer deserved to berecognized and praised during their lives, Melville is that writer. Althoughunfortunate that his passing went almost unnoticed by the public, he is now andjustly so, an immortal in the annals of American literature, and his work willbe looked upon with both admiration and envy for many years to come. APPENDICESAny appendices should appear after the text of your term paper. BIBLIOGRAPHYUse the Bibliography TaskWizard to help you quickly and easilycreate a bibliography for your paper. Pick the same style as your footnotestyle.