This is actually a true story? All I want to say is what the fuck. While reading the article, “The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby-Dick,'” I was honestly appalled at the end. It’s almost impossible to think that an event like that could ever happened to someone, much less a group of people. It genuinely felt like I was reading the script to a movie. I’ve yet to read Moby-Dick, but after learning that the story of the Essex inspired Melville, I am definitely excited to dive right into the novel.
Pollard’s story is filled with sadness, trauma, guilt, irony, horror and dread. I wonder if he ever questioned why something like that happened to him. Why did his crew mates burn down an island? Why did a massive whale decided to hit his boat, not once, but twice, sinking it? Why did Chase believe the islands that might’ve saved them was filled with cannibals? Why did his cousin have to be the one shot and killed and eaten in order for the others to survive? Reading about the things that happened to Captain Pollard on this journey, the trauma he and his crew mates went through, all I can think of is holy shit.
If a man told me a story like this, much like how Pollard told Melville, I would definitely have to write a book about it too.
Hi Jimmy, I had the same reaction, “holy shit”. It’s almost unreal that the Essex story actually happened. The mix of bad luck, human error, and sheer horror (from burning the island to the whale sinking their ship, to the desperate choices for survival) makes it feel more like fiction than history. I also think about what Pollard might have thought about all these series of events happening to him and the trauma that he had to go through, I wonder if he felt the so-called “survivor’s guilt”. Knowing Melville drew from Pollard’s real trauma makes me see Moby-Dick in a completely different light, and I think reading it after this will hit even harder.
Hey Jimmy, I feel like all these questions that came to your mind from reading this article is going to be similar to what Ishmael and the rest of the crew might do throughout their journey. Something that came to mind right now is how the whale isn’t the major focus of the story, in both Pollard’s real life experience and the journey of the Pequod. Yes, the whales are the driving force of these quests and lead them to where they end up, but it is the journey itself that explores different matters, such as the depravity humans will sink to in the worst of circumstances. Focusing on these unexpected avenues could very well be what Emerson wanted in his ideal American scholar, not outright ignoring the original quest, but taking the time to follow where these questions lead us.