HERMAN MELVILLE: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
When Herman Melville sat down at the age of 25 to write Typee, his
first book, he had no college education or even a high school
diploma; he had no money and no intention of becoming a professional
writer. What he did have was experience: four years of exciting
adventures on whaling ships, in the navy, on exotic South Sea
islands, and a short but unforgettable time as the only white man
among a tribe of cannibals. If you've ever had the urge to set down
on paper some amazing experience of your own, you have a sense of
how Melville must have felt when he dashed off Typee--the story of
his stay with cannibals in a tropical paradise. Imagine his surprise
when the book became an instant bestseller! What a stupendous
beginning to a writer's career.
More than 40 years later--in 1888--the 69-year-old Herman Melville
began work on his last book, the masterpiece Billy Budd. Between the
publication of Typee and the writing of Billy Budd, Melville had
experiences of an entirely different sort than those of his youth.
He had married and fathered a family. He had seen his early fame and
success evaporate when his novels became more serious and difficult.
He had come close to suffering a nervous breakdown and finally
decided to give up writing fiction. He had been forced, for
financial reasons, to take a boring job in the New York Customs
House and stayed with it for some 20 years. These experiences
deepened Melville and in some ways embittered him. But they also
gave him insight about himself and the nature of man. He learned the
truths of the heart. From the varied events of his life, he
discovered how people hate and forgive, how they act under pressure,
how evil can destroy them and good can save them. At the end of his
life, he wanted to write fiction again so he could impart his wisdom.
The result is Billy Budd, the capstone of Melville's life and career,
and one of the gems of American literature.
Billy Budd tells the tale of the tragic demise of the Handsome
Sailor brought down by the forces of evil and inhuman law. Typee
describes a tribe of Polynesians--cannibals, yes, but "noble
savages" just the same--whom Melville came to admire for their
beauty, happiness, and utter freedom from the corruptions of Western
civilization. Your first reaction might be that these are totally
different books demonstrating how much Melville had changed over the
course of his lifetime. Right? Right. But that's not all. Even
though four decades had separated the writing of Melville's first
and last books, they do have certain themes in common. Under the
sunny, tropical surface of Typee valley, don't you see the evil
lurking, the fear, the violence, and the cannibalism? Both Billy and
the Typee inhabitants are good-looking, good-natured, kind, and
happy; yet, without warning, brutality can flash out of these
innocents with terrifying speed. Good and evil, innocence and
