Graciela Clavel
Professor Jessica Pressman
ECL 522
17 December 2025
Literature and Reality: Herman Melville and the Society that Refused to See Him
Herman Melville’s 19th century novel Moby Dick is a piece of social critique of its time that remained forgotten for decades. Melville did not live to see the revival and eventual canonization of his magnum opus, something that occurred in the post-modern period of England; the ‘Great American Novel’ was revived by the English at a time of Great War and loss. As Moby Dick mostly concerns itself with critiques on slavery, capitalism and tyranny this work did not catch the attention of its intended audience, an audience that was both entangled and responsible for the same critiques Melville writes about. In drawing from both the legacy of Moby Dick and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “American Scholar”, it can be concluded that a troubled society will refuse to see its perpetuation of inequality even if it brings harm to their own lives.
A quintessential piece of Moby Dick is the happenings upon the Pequod with the tyrannical leader Ahab and his subjects of undying loyalty. In these scenes throughout the novel, we are met with Ahab consciously putting the ship and its mates in existential danger for the sake of his personal obsession with killing the whale Moby Dick. These scenes are a microcosm of a larger critique that Melville makes with American society and its refusal to acknowledge the existential dangers of tyrannical leaders, something still remnant in the 21st century. While Melville poses Ahab under this lens of tyranny, there is a connection to be made between the futile attempts of total control from Ahab and human control over nature. Ahab’s famous line “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me” (Melville 178) puts this into frame. Ahab’s obsession with control upon the Pequod can be felt in this single line. Ahab finds violence, that is his ‘strike’ against the sun, as a way to gain back control from nature and circumstances he cannot control. Ahab’s entire hunt for Moby Dick is shaped by violence as it is his method for control. Nature ‘insults’ Ahab when it makes him cognizant of his mortality and lack of control through his first confrontation with Moby Dick, leaving him without a leg. Violence is a way that people, especially tyrants, can feel a sense of control over the uncontrollable, that is the natural world.
As Melville uses the ocean and its creatures to represent the fluidity and wildness of the natural world, there is also a connection between the wildness of humanity and people as a part of the natural world. This can be seen in the mirroring between the whale and man: “This man and this whale again came together, and one vanquished the other” (Melville 222). The man and the whale are represented as separate entities that come together through violence, leaving one ‘vanquished’. Yet, man and whale are part of the same wilderness that birthed them to life but through othering one another the man believes they are separate, and even one more superior than the other. This creates a hierarchy within nature of who has more power, and thus control. This is mirrored in American society’s racialized hierarchy of people, some are ‘othered’ and some have more ‘power’. Melville continuously uses his scenes upon the Pequod and with the whale to comment on the issues permeating America.
Another aspect of American society that Melville integrates into his novel is capitalism and empire. As the narrator Ishmael defends the industry of whaling as one of respect, there is a point made that his labor contributes to the continuation of an empire, one of the largest in history, England. Ishamel defends whaling through the framing of upholding an empire: “Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whaleman supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!” (Melville 123). The whaleman is an individual who sees his work as important to those he will never meet or even live similarly to, that is the kings and queens. The whaleman and the king live on different ends of the economic spectrum, yet without the whaleman there is no coronation, no assurance of his reign and thus system surviving. Whaling is not for the benefit of the whaler, he may have little economic gain but it is nothing compared to the gain of the larger empire. Melville highlights how in oppressive systems the illusion and pride of individuality is sold to the masses to separate them from one another through the separation of a ‘ye’ and ‘we’, selling individuals the possibility of being closer to wealth than reality. The reality is that the whaler has more in common with the loyal Briton than the king on his coronation day. Capitalism depends on the ‘American Dream’, that is the hope that one day the individual will get their slice of the wealth in exchange for labor and oppression of himself, and in a time period of slavery, the belief in the oppression and abuse of others.
This belief in comfort above all else is highlighted by Melville: “Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep” (Melville 139). Being ‘asleep’ means being ignorant of the exploitation of labor and bodies that enrich the kings and queens. Those who are asleep are kept dreaming, dreaming of wealth and a ‘great’ America that does not exist. Being awake is uncomfortable because it makes one conscious of the pain surrounding the comforts of life. Melville uses the epic of Moby Dick to call attention to this pain, something audiences of his time were not ready to face when reading this novel.
In the article “The Anatomy of Melville’s Fame”, author O.W. Reigel breaks down the reception of Moby Dick from the perspectives of both American and English audiences. Reigel highlights that while English audiences focused on the literary aspects of the novel, Americans were resistant to the novel as a whole. Reigel notes the “conservative American critics” (Reigel 202) as “being suspicious of blurb and exaggeration” (Reigel 202). Moby Dick flopped for decades under this guise. It was only under extreme circumstances of tyranny and war did audiences revive the novel and created a legacy that remains today. While Reigel notes what happened with American audiences upon the release of Moby Dick, Emerson offers perspective on the shortfalls that may have led to this novel initially being a flop.
Emerson’s “American Scholar” discusses the ways in which Americans should regard knowledge and experience when rising into scholarship. Emerson offers many pieces of advice, but one aspect in particular correlates with Moby Dick and its initial reception:
“For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society.”
Emerson does not believe that accepting what has come before and existed does not mean that it should always be this way. Melville creating Moby Dick was a way for American audiences to step away from the ‘treading the old road’ of racist and oppressive ideals. Emerson illuminates a path towards accepting and learning about the world for what it is rather than accepting what is given. Melville’s audiences rejected this novel during its time because individuals were not ready to come face to face with what their society was built upon. This statement is still true today and may be a continuous struggle for people in general. Melville still offers an opportunity to try anyways even if there is failure. Failure is essential to reading Moby Dick and rereading what we are told about the world and each other.
Throughout this course, failure has been a state that many silently struggled with. As discussed in class, people are afraid to admit when they are struggling and we tend to blame ourselves when we do not understand something. In reading Moby Dick, we are exploring failure with Melville and the endless chapters that left us confused. While Emerson emphasises the individual and stepping away from the masses, something Melville highlights as well, there is importance in learning from one another to understand something like Moby Dick. Moby Dick teaches us that we cannot completely understand the world around us or control it, but this class also insists on working together to try to understand anyways. While this book took a while to be read under a different lens than its 19th century contemporaries, it is still an enigma that shows the reader different sides of the whale, and ourselves, each time.
Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” 1903.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1851.
Riegel, O. W. “The Anatomy of Melville’s Fame.” American Literature, vol. 3, no. 2, 1931, pp. 195–203. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2919779. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.