A Reflection On Herman Melvilles Accomplishments :: essays research papers fc

A Reflection On Herman Melville's Accomplishments "As an author Melville both courted failure and scorned success."(pg. 613, A Companion to Melville Studies). How many famous legends in time have existed to know no fame. How many remarkable artist have lived and died never receiving due credit for there work. Herman Melville is clearly an artist of words. Herman Melville is certainly a prodigy when it comes to writing. Herman Melville never received hardly any credit for any of his works. Melville wrote such novels as Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd. Melville wrote about things that he knew about. He wrote about his own experiences. The one thing that he loved, and knew the most about was whaling. Herman Melville was born in 1819, the son of Allan and Maria Melville. He was one of a Family of eight children - four boys and four girls - who was raised comfortably in a nice neighborhood in New York City. Herman Melville came from a famous blood line out of Albany, NY. Melville's grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, was a hero. Even though the General died six years before Melville was born, Melville still put him in his book, Pierre. On the outer side of the blood line there was Major Melville. The Major was a wealthy Boston merchant who was one of the famous "Mohawks" who boarded the ship of the East India Company that night of 1773, and dumped the cargo in to the Boston Harbor. Later Major Melville became the Naval Officer of The Port of Boston, a post given to him by Gorge Washington. It is like the two blood lines fitted together perfectly to create Herman Melville. Herman had the strength of the General, and the crazy hart of the Major. Herman Melville was "hardly more than a boy" when he ran out to sea after his fathers death. A young Melville sighed up as a boy on the St. Lawrence to Liverpool and back to New York. Many of the events that show up in Melville's Redburn are actuarial events that happened of his first voyage. After returning home and finding his mothers family fortune gone, Melville decided to take a journey over land this time to the Mississippi river to visit his Uncle Thomas. Through out all of Melville's work the image of inland landscapes, of farms, prairies, rivers, lakes, and forest recur as a counterpoint to the barren sea. Also in Moby-Dick Melville tells how he was a "Vagabond" on the Erie Canal, which was the way Melville returned. Melville wrote that it was not the lakes or forest that sank in as much