A Reflection On Herman Melvilles Accomplishments

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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

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