Final thoughts on Melville

To journey through the works of Herman Melville is to journey with one of the most able literary minds the world has known. One of the first things that comes to pass in Melville's writings, is the utter impatience with which he began his adult life. He left home looking for something, and as he tells that story in Redburn, Typee and Omoo, he is always scouring the horizon for the next opportunity. The sailors in these stories are never fully satisfied with their lot in life.

Melville also counters the 19th century romanticism about nature. For Melville, the natural world is just as frenzied and chaotic as the human world, equally capable of creation and destruction. Any vision of a storm at sea presents this, see especially in Moby-Dick and White-Jacket.

As far as religious motifs in Melville, one of the most telling is the vision of the one who does good, only to be rejected and ultimately destroyed. This is at its most biting in Pierre, but also is the prominent note in the novella Billy Budd, sailor. Both protagonists are the embodiment of what humanity should be, but the world is more concerned with propriety or justice to see it.

Melville's most jarring criticism of religion is the charge of hypocrisy which he levels at the missionaries in his early South sea adventures. The hypocrisy of people also weighs heavily in the plot of The Confidence-Man. I believe Melville's view of humanity was entirely pessimistic, perhaps based on the hyper-Calvinism of the northeastern United States in the early 19th century. Whether striving to conquer self, conquer obsession or conquer nature, humanity's cause was futile.

Melville is such a joy to read, even in the novels that I have listed at the bottom of the list. Melville's writing causes me to think, about myself and my place in the world around me. The struggles of Melville's main characters are the struggles of humanity. Where do I belong? Is this enough for me? How do I do the right thing? How can I be free?

I admit that as a Christian, my answer to these questions will be different from Melville's. Melville knew there was no earthly saving grace; he was unsure about the heavenly one. But Melville's vision of the dark world that denies its heroes a place, and never really has a happy ending, is for me a vision of the world without Jesus Christ.  And that is a sad world, indeed.