Herman Melville Research Paper

Raju Singh
Mrs. McDaniel
American Literature
Herman Melville Progress is key to living life, but if one is advancing through life with the motivation of revenge, then, in actuality, he or she is truly regressing. Revenge is an extremely corruptive trait. It causes people to do uncharacteristic things that normally would not be done. The perception of right and wrong is blurred and one takes inadvertent actions that may cost friendships, possessions, and even lives. Revenge is often a major motivating factor in the characters that are in the works written during the Dark Romanticism period. One of the most celebrated and influential American authors in history, Herman Melville, was born on August 1, 1819; his reputation was not quite …show more content…
He sacrifices the lives of every crewmember of the ship and only one member, Ishmael, survives the wreckage. Moby Dick represents numerous things based on reading level and interpretation of the story. To Captain Ahab, Moby Dick represents all evil that is in this world. The theme of racial tolerance that Melville placed in this novel was unprecedented to the time of publication. People hardly talked about it and seldom read about it. There is a diverse cast of characters in the novel. It includes a Native American, South Sea Islander, and an African tribesman. There is a sense of racial equality on this ship that was never before seen in texts of the time. Melville does avoid the topic of slavery and the minorities are subordinates to the whites. (“Moby Dick Themes”). In the text Melville writes, “For all his tattoings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.”(25). Critics were rather perplexed by Herman Melville. One critic said, “ He didn’t want to be known, but rather to be read” (“Review”). Herman Melville had many outside influences that guided his writing style throughout his years as an author. He is most associated with the literary subgenre, Dark Romanticism. Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre that shows that people are

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Herman Melville Research Paper

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