Herman Melvilles Works - Style, Subjects, and Influences - Essay Example

Melville shows his criticism of the rich Dives who prospers at the expense of orphans at the end of Chapter Two. Melville’s narrator, Ishmael says; ‘Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.’ Melville incorporated stage directions in his character’s monologues. These helpful directions are in brackets. For example, Ishmael narrates this in Chapter Two; ‘Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper- (he had a redder one afterward) pooh, pooh!’ The narrator has long soliloquies in order to explain to the reader what is happening.

Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener is his famous short story because it deals with Existentialist and Absurdist elements. The character Bartleby works for his lawyer boss. Initially, he is hardworking but he changes when he stops working but stays around the office doing nothing. The lawyer tries to help him but Bartleby refuses to cooperate when he answers all requests with; ‘I prefer not to.’ Eventually, Bartleby is imprisoned for being a nuisance to society and he slowly starves himself to death because he prefers not to eat. Bartleby demonstrates his Existentialist unique position as a responsible individual who makes his own choices. Melville incorporates his philosophies of anti-rationalism and anti-empiricism into Bartleby. Melville wanted this work to have absurdist ideas so he made Bartleby behave in absurd ways.

Melville’s poem, John Marr And Other Sailors speak to the reader in a direct manner which is typical of Melville’s style of narration that he used in his novel and short story. His philosophies of anti-rationalism are found in his first verse;

‘Taking things as fated merely,
Childlike though the world ye spanned;
Nor holding unto life too dearly,
Melville was consistent in his writing voice to express his personal philosophies. His greatest work was Moby-Dick and this shows Melville’s typical style with all the elements as discussed in this essay. Read More