Herman Melville: Consider the Sea

Vocabulary word somnific (adjective) sleep-inducing; causing sleep The narrator in Consider the Sea has a somnific voice. Root word: somn(us)- (Latin for sleep) Other words using this root: somnolent (adj) – sleepy; drowsy insomnia (noun) – the inability to sleep somnambulate (verb) – to sleep walk (ambul – root word meaning walk)

MELVILLE – CONSIDER THE SEA Video Born August 19, 1819. Melville was drawn to the sea. As a young man, he spent five years of his life as a common sailor traveling the world. Hard life; inhumane ship captain Melville jumped ship in the Marcasis Islands (French Polynesia). “Enjoyed, for a time, every man’s fantasy of an island paradise life.” Lived with a native princess

He left the island when he grew bored with the life and found out that his king was really a cannibal and he was about to be tattooed… Returned to New York. Became famous as “the man who lived among the cannibals.” Wrote a book about his experiences entitled TYPEE (Tai Pei). Wrote “nautical stories” for pay. Considered it “just a job”--no different than any other job.

Became a part of new American “literati” (people famous in literary circles). Began what he called his real education—an intense study of literature. English writers (Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats) Emerson

In the Mid-1800s, the whaling industry was at its peak. Whale parts used in everyday life: whale oil used to light lamps, whale bone used in kitchens and in corsets. Whaling ships stayed out and away from home three-four years each voyage in order to fill their ships’ holds with whale oil.

The life of a whaler was filled with physical and emotional cruelty. This attitude set the tone for the first half, first draft of Moby Dick, but then Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Hawthorne’s influence changed Melville, and Moby Dick.

Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic, and it changed Melville’s ideas and attitudes. Melville was most captured by Hawthorne’s ability to bring out in his writing “the darker depths of the human soul…” Moby Dick changed from just another adventures on the high seas story. Melville “made a philosophical epic out of an adventure tale.”

“The sea had soaked his heart through.” Homer wrote this of Odysseus in The Odyssey, but it applied to Melville, as well. Some people whose souls are connected to the sea—and to the adventures of long voyages or journeys--find it difficult to adjust to normal, everyday life in society.

Melville said his book Moby Dick “was broiled in hellfire.” Melville “took a common, brutal captain (Captain Ahab in Moby Dick) and made him a figure of great nobility and great tragedy” (Ahab became a tragic hero). Ahab sees the white whale (Moby Dick) as “the other” (evil personified). “…outrageous strength and…malice…” Ahab “binds himself to the devil” in his obsessive quest for revenge against the white whale. Melville said his book Moby Dick “was broiled in hellfire.”

Melville’s next book, Pierre, was also a failure. Moby Dick was praised by Hawthorne and his friends, but attacked by literary critics and disliked by the general public. Too complex, too dark, too intellectual Melville’s next book, Pierre, was also a failure.

Discouraged, Melville stopped writing novels for a time, and stopped writing about the sea. Wrote short stories about characters who were trapped (“landlocked”) economically and spiritually.

Melville became ill and faced financial ruin. Bartleby, The Scrivener was about a writer whose physical surroundings (working in a dingy office where the only window looked out a a solid brick wall) resulted in first writer’s block, and then, finally, madness. Melville became ill and faced financial ruin. Decided to write for himself, not for popularity. Became reclusive.

Returned to America—failed as a lecturer. Melville traveled to Europe hoping to find work, trying to recover his health. He did not do well. Returned to America—failed as a lecturer. Melville was seen as America’s “Mariner Poet.” The Civil War reignited his passion for writing. “War, like the sea, is for men…” he wrote. He began writing Civil War poetry.

1863 – Poor and in ill health, Melville went to New York City to work a menial job as a customs clerk. Worked on a long, epic poem entitled “Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage in the Holy Land” (1876) Took him 20 years to write it.

In Melville’s last decade he wrote his last, and maybe best, novel Billy Budd. He returned to his mariner roots. Billy Budd is about an innocent young sailor and the cruel, violent world of sailors and life at sea. Melville died September 28, 1891.