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

A Reflection On Herman Melvilles Accomplishments     "As an author Melville both courted failure and scorned success."(pg.613, A Companion to Melville Studies). How many celebrated legends in time haveexisted to know no fame. How many remarkable artist have lived and died neverreceiving due attribute for there work. Herman Melville is clearly an artist ofwords. Herman Melville is certainly a prodigy when it comes to writing. HermanMelville never received hardly any credit for any of his works. Melville wrotesuch novels as Moby-Dick, and billy Budd. Melville wrote about things that heknew 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 wasraised comfortably in a nice neighborhood in New York City. Herman Melvillecame from a famou s blood line out of Albany, NY. Melvilles grandfather, GeneralPeter Gansevoort, was a hero. Even though the General died six years beforeMelville was born, Melville still put him in his book, Pierre.     On the outer side of the blood line there was Major Melville. The Majorwas a wealthy Boston merchant who was one of the famous "Mohawks" who boardedthe institutionalize of the East India Company that night of 1773, and dumped the cargo into the Boston Harbor. Later Major Melville became the Naval Officer of The Portof Boston, a post given to him by Gorge Washington. It is like the two bloodlines fitted together perfectly to create Herman Melville. Herman had thestrength of the General, and the crazy hart of the Major.     Herman Melville was "hardly more than a boy" when he ran out to seaafter 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 sh ow up inMelvilles Redburn are actuarial events that happened of his first voyage.After returning home and finding his mothers family fortune gone, Melvilledecided to take a journey over shore this time to the Mississippi river to visithis Uncle Thomas. Through out all of Melvilles work the image of inlandlandscapes, of farms, prairies, rivers, lakes, and forest recur as acounterpoint to the pure(a) 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