Redburn by Herman Melville - Research Paper Example

Redburn by Herman Melville Redburn: His First Voyage (1849), Herman Melville's fourth novel, is a semi-autobiographical novel describing the experiences of a refined but inexperienced young man, Wellingborough Redburn, on an ocean voyage to Liverpool and his encounters with poverty, crime and debauchery in Liverpool. In Redburn, the protagonist, Redburn, begins his journey looking through the eyes of a child, staring at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Redburn embodies the naiveté of a child, that is, the preserved innocence of youth untainted by life and evil, the idealistic romantic marked with the rough edges that come along with inexperience. Redburn leaves the United States a nostalgic, potentially violent boy, but returns a man shaped by the maturing, enlightening, and disciplining forces of life. After working on the ship Highlander, assimilating into the crew, and experiencing the world through living rather than imagining, Redburn alters his Romantic mindset. Redburn is forced to revise his naive misconception of the world as a perfect and idealistic place. In Redburn, Redburn is transformed from a boy marked by both the romantic and unpolished nature of youth, to a self-reliant man and through his transformation he shows a distinct change in the deepest levels of his cognitive mindset. The novel is a compelling tale of the innocence of a boy being transformed to disillusionment by his bitter experiences. It is a coming-of-age story written by one of America's greatest novelists. Redburn the main character of the novel is a young boy from New York who is on his first voyage to England. The author gives a poetic description of Redburn’s journey and while doing so he puts forth his feelings and observations about the dark realities of life. The story he weaves is the story of the loss of innocence of a young boy moving away from the comfortable life of home in order to experience life all alone. His only dream is to run away to the sea. But when his dream comes true he finds that reality can be much harsher than he had imagined. He is mocked by the crew of the ship for his weakness and bullied by the cruel and merciless Jackson. Redburn is treated with contempt by the Captain and does not have any friend. Not receiving any kindness leaves him depressed and isolated. The deaths of some of the seamen leave him even more disturbed. He endures the long journey from New York to Liverpool only to find poverty and moral corruption in Liverpool. Redburn finds that Liverpool is not like what is described in the guidebook belonging to his late father. He feels even more disillusioned. On exploring the city he is appalled by the condition of the poor. He meets Harry Bolton, a vagabond, and goes off to London with him. In London Redburn again sees corruption. He also finds out that Harry has run up a gambling debt and has to run away. Redburn helps him escape in the same ship the "Highlander" he had traveled on his way to Liverpool. On the return journey some emigrants to America accompany them. The unhealthy conditions in the ship results in an epidemic and Redburn witnesses even more deaths. Jackson dies as they near New York and Captain Riga cheats Redburn and Harry out of their wages. At the end of the journey all that Redburn cares is that he is happy to be back at home with his family. From the novel we gather that young Redburn is a boy just on the verge of manhood. His gentle upbringing, has not prepared him for the hardships of the profession he has chosen. His innocence is put to test by the harsh living conditions of the ship and by the vice he witnesses. We find Melville skillfully guiding Redburn as he comes of age while experiencing the joys and hardships of manhood while at sea. Redburn survives the harsh treatment meted out to him on board the ship even though his first initial reactions are anger and withdrawal. He witnesses horror, corruption and depravity. The horrors he sees include such instances as the madness and suicide of a drunken sailor, an encounter with a dilapidated boat with a crew of rotting corpses. But more importantly he meets Jackson who is the embodiment of evil. According to William Patton, Redburn experiences three levels of experience, on the ship: 1)the hold, which is the place of the immigrants where they are treated worse than slaves (2) the deck divided into rulers and subjects (3) the mast which represents the ethereal, world. In Liverpool, Redburn witnesses the notorious poverty of Liverpool slums. He then goes to London where he spends a night in a gambling house that personifies decadence. He finds that the guidebook belonging to his father, useless because the city has changed since then. Here he makes a statement full of pathos. He says, "Every age makes its own guide-books and the old ones are used for waste paper." (Melville, 1849) But in the end, in spite of the horrors and the hard lessons Redburn does grow up and becomes proficient in his chosen profession and realizes his limitations. Redburn becomes resilient, a trait he shares with other Melville characters like Ishmael, White-Jacket, Israel Potter and others. The hardships he suffers at sea and the realities he faces in Liverpool and London introduce the young Redburn to the harsh world and make him grow up. There is no doubt that Redburn comes of age and at the end of the novel he is ready to face the world having shed his innocence. According to James Miller (1962), Redburn begins as "an innocent Young Seeker exploring the world that ultimately and deliberately discards his mask of innocence". Redburn who starts out as a naïve lad, his mind filled with thoughts of adventure and grandeur, is forced to cast away these thoughts and in the process exchange his childhood and innocence for adulthood The difference in the ways Redburn and his friend Bolton face the realities on board the ship as well as outside demonstrates that Redburn has indeed matured and come of age. The two boys experience the same ordeals such as going up the mast to clean it and both get cheated by Riga. Climbing up the mast frightens both, but Redburn steadies himself saying, “there [is] no hanging back, [for] it would look like cowardice" (Melville, 1849).  He conquers his fear and climbs up the mast to prove to his fellow sailors that he is not a coward. Here Melville uses the mast as a symbol to denote the coming out of the innocence of boyhood to the hardship of manhood.  Again when the two are cheated out of their wages by Riga, Redburn reacts calmly. Unlike Bolt, who throws a fit, Redburn does not shout at the captain nor demand justice but simply leaves accepting calmly the unfair treatment, thereby displaying maturity. The two very different reactions by Redburn and Bolt demonstrate that Redburn has matured and learnt to accept things when they do not go in his favor. Towards the end of the novel one gets to know what has become of Redburn and Bolton; and this gives us an idea of how they have grown through their experiences Redburn continues to sail and make a good living for himself whereas Bolton "Unable to establish himself in New York… he disappears from Redburn's ken" (Miller, 1962), again demonstrating that Bolton was unable to mature whereas Redburn is able to do so. Again when Bolton falls off of the ship accidentally after refusing to enter the boats, one knows that his previous experiences have not taught him anything. On the other hand Redburn has learnt many lessons from his first voyage and applying them to his own life becomes a successful sailor. Miller (1962) is right when he says,  "Upon conclusion of the voyage, a wiser, more experienced, and tougher Redburn heads for home with a new self-confidence," whereas Bolton "disappears from view in the complex life of the metropolis".  In conclusion it can be said that Redburn is a retrospective book .and is “the Sailor-boy Confessions of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service." (Melville, 1849) The narrator here recalls his growing pains. According to Thomas Tanselle, “A first-person account of a young man’s coming of age, his initiation into the life of sailors, and his exposure to the slums of Liverpool and the gaudy opulence of London gambling houses, Redburn narrates the adventures of innocence abroad in a world of vice, brutality, and deception”. All his experiences rob him off his innocence and childhood. Redburn in short is about the adventures of an innocent young boy in a world that is filled with vice, corruption, deception and brutality. References 1. Melville, Herman (1849), Redburn: His First Voyage, Penguin Classics 1976.   2. Miller, James (1962), Redburn and White Jacket: Initiation and baptism, A Reader's Guide to Herman Melville.  New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, 1962.  3. Patton William, Biblical, Legal and Miltonic influences in Melville’s Redburn,  http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/patton23.htm 4. Tanselle Thomas, Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=102 Oklahoma City University Law Review  Volume 23, Number (1998) reprinted by permission Oklahoma City University Law Review  BIBLICAL, LEGAL, AND MILTONIC INFLUENCES IN MELVILLE'S  REDBURN*  WILLIAM WESLEY PATTON **  According to WILLIAM WESLEY PATTON , Redburn experiences three levels of experience, on the ship: (1) the hold, the dark deprived world of the immigrants, is a grotesque asylum where they are treated worse than slaves, forced to grovel in their own excrement, and shut off from the fresh air above to breathe the odors of their own defilement; (2) the deck represents practical human existence; community is divided into rulers and subjects, wealthy and slaves, a pragmatic world of laws, rules, and labor; and (3) high aloft on the masts, the third world is ethereal, where metaphysical rovings send individuals into transport with the transcendental  Jackson, "who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world" is the only character to unite all three levels of experience aboard    The world of the flesh enamors Redburn's dreams; nothing would be more satisfying from his journeys abroad than bringing home "foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wearing them up and down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to look at me."59 Second among Redburn's desires is knowledge of the world: "how fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me."60 And the possibility of Redburn's initiation into the cult of the devil is shown in his awe of the man who had traveled through "Strong Arabia http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/patton23.htm Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets Harry Bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of London that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in Melville's fiction. Redburn’s father died a bankrupt and therefore Redburn had to leave home to become a common sailor. the novel chronicles the boy's experiences among his illiterate shipmates and the wretched poor of Liverpool Social history and the politics of manhood in Melville's 'Redburn.' by Joyce A. Rowe Redburn's "First Voyage" (the subtitle emphasizes the initiatory aspect) takes him from his village home in upstate New York to Liverpool and back again. Although the journey motif suggests the typical movement from innocence to experience, this rite of passage is at best equivocal, since the lesson of the voyage is the connection between isolation and self-preservation in a world in which individual survival is ultimately dependent upon an arbitrary fate. As the older narrator asserts at the end of the novel, "But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive..." (312; emphasis mine). Indeed, Redburn's premature exposure to a heartless world enacts an extreme version of a pattern of filial separation and class dislocation which appears to have been widespread among Jacksonian youth. http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=Ld1RBl1s2pJKHDLWlJhMFThsyLLJrvRBv7qhFyWpHJ3SpgYkbwnb!555708061!-1331918248?docId=5000208321 One cannot deny that Redburn during the voyage learns many lessons of life. Redburn who starts out as a naïve lad, his mind filled with thoughts of adventure and grandeur, is forced to cast away these thoughts and in the process exchange his childhood and innocence for adulthood.  When we compare what happens to Redburn and what happens to Bolton it is evident that Redburn matures   whereas Bolton shows his inability to mature.  The two boys experience the same ordeals – going aloft to clean the mast (a symbol of their first tentative steps out of childhood and into adulthood), both get cheated by Riga but only Redburn becomes a man afterwards   Arvin explains the symbolic nature of this action by stating that "the outwards subject of the book is a young boy's first voyage as a sailor before the mast; its inward subject is the initiation of innocence into evil" (Bloom 44); the symbolic interpretation is a first climb out of the innocence of boyhood into the experience and hardship of manhood.     Redburn, however, rallies himself: "there [is] no hanging back," he declares, "[for] it would look like cowardice" (Melville 76).  He conquers his mind-numbing fear and climbs up the mast, so that he can prove to his fellow sailors that he is no coward.   When the time comes for the two boys to receive their wages for their voyage, Captain Riga refuses to pay them in full.  Using their behavior as excuses, Riga gives Bolton a dollar-fifty and orders Redburn to pay him ("by running away from the ship in Liverpool," Riga explains, "you forfeited your wages" (398-399); in other words, Redburn's exploration of the English countryside has given Riga an excuse to not pay him).     Redburn, however, reacts calmly and respectfully  Redburn does not scream at the captain, nor does he demand justice; he simply accepts this unfair judgment and leaves.   This is a staggering display of maturity; Redburn does not pout or pitch a fit at this injustice but merely walks away calmly.   These two very different reactions to injustice are a demonstration of how Redburn has matured enough to accept when things do not end in his favor and calmly walk away, whereas Bolton still has not learned that throwing a fit is not the proper way to deal with such situations. (a symbol of their first tentative steps out of childhood and into adulthood), .their individual fates symbolize if and how they have grown through their experiences during their first voyage.   Miller, James.  "Redburn and White Jacket: Initiation and baptism."  A Reader's Guide to Herman Melville.  New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, 1962.  54-74.  Redburn, His First Voyage has long been one of Melville’s most popular works. A first-person account of a young man’s coming of age, his initiation into the life of sailors, and his exposure to the slums of Liverpool and the gaudy opulence of London gambling houses, Redburn narrates the adventures of innocence abroad in a world of vice, brutality, and deception. Read More