Tag Archives: The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby Dick’ article

Melville was inpired by…cannibals???

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While reading this article, my jaw was on the floor the entire time. What do you mean Melville was inspired by that? He was inpsired by someone’s trauma and wrote a whole 800 page book about it, my gosh. What that man had gone through for Melville to be inspired by that to write Moby Dick must be something. What George Pollard went through was something he definetly won’t forget ever and would be haunted by his actions which he had to make to stay alive.

I would never wish for that whole situation that Pollard went through on anyone. Having to restort to cannibalism to stay alive, eating his crewmates, and even HIS OWN COUSIN. Like what the heck that is insane. Then for the author of this article to say that a scholar had written that Pollard commited “gastronomic incest.” That was a sentence I never thought I would read in my entire life. I know that that guilt must have haunted him daily and if I could, I would want to sit down with him and ask what his thoughts must have been like after commiting that act to stay alive.

The whole cannibal part was shocking to me and it reminded me of that one movie that was based on a real life situation where in 1972 a plane that had a rugby team had crashed in the Andes Mountains which had left them stranded and resulted in them becoming cannibals to stay alive. This traumatic situation also became a movie called “Alive” (1993) and even a show too which I found to be like how Melville was inspired by the trauma which Pollard had went through to create a novel on a this killer whale. I guess when aspiring authors hear a very traumatic situation, they decide to write a whole book on it.

Melville has a creative mind and I am very interested now having read this article to see what we have in store for us in this book. Again I haven’t read this book before and I am ready to be confused, shocked, and probably cry over what is going to be happening within this really long book.

Captain Pollard and the Story of the Essex… holy shit

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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.


Emerson & King

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Waking up at 6:30am to read Emerson’s ,” The American Scholar”, (TWICE) and I still don’t understand it, sadly. What I got from it was a little bit on how to be the perfect “American scholar” is the past (books), which probably means having the right understanding and be yourself because you won’t get to experience life in order to have.

Emerson kind of mentioned on how you can find knowledge by learning the real truth with books and how they are basically the key to understand life fully, “Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,–learn the amount of this influence more conveniently,–by considering their value alone.” (Emerson) I agree with this concept becasue I actually do agree on how books open up more creative minds and ideas with a full experience on what the book mentions or the type of genre it is. “Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles,” this quote got to me, no words.

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. ” (Emerson), this quote caught my interest because I majored in Creative Writing (even got a certificate) and enjoy creative writing because it I think creativity can expand the mind to it protentional of creativity when it comes to writing.

For some odd reason, I found King’s article interesting, but sad at the same time. The fact that those men had to endure for months in the sea and their only way to survive was cannibalism, its heartbreaking and the fact that they had to choose who to eat was just horrible to read about that. It reminded me about the Uruguayan rugby team whose airplane crashed into the Andes mountains and endured so much a traumatic event and also to recourse to cannibalism as well. To know that Herman Melville was inspired by this true event makes it more interesting, nerve-wrecking and fully grasp the need on wanting to read it now and know what the deal is with Moby Dick. It still was a bit hard to understand so hopefully can someone help me understand it a bit more in class.

Emerson and King

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I initially skimmed through Emerson’s text, then had about three headaches and took a couple Tylenol just to understand at least two points: American scholars should be thirsty for knowledge and form their own identity instead of copying others. I am probably on my 4th read before passing out again, and that’s still all I can figure out.

About the two points I did find, I… agree? I don’t really know what else to say because they seem straightforward enough. You’re not a scholar when you don’t want to learn, and America is known for using other cultures and blending them, which I guess is a tradition of its own. I don’t know, I came here because I was gaslit into thinking I’d meet Spider-Man when I was about to turn 8.

At the very least I can comprehend King’s article and, I’m probably messed up for this, but I find it amusing that they became cannibals after trying to avoid islands of them. I guess it made sense when King included “Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea,” but it’s still a terrifying thought. There goes any hope of ridding my thalassophobia.

I got hooked while reading this article.

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After reading The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby Dick’, written by Gilbert King, the one question I would pose for this blog is: Is the book Moby Dick as disturbed as the true-life stories that this article claims to be? And my answer for this is: probably yes. The reason why I think the book is going to be disturbing is that it was inspired by stories that actually happened in the past. The events of cannibalism are what disturbed me the most, not because of how disgusting it is, but because of the thought of what a human being could do when they have reached the lowest point in their life. In this case, it is starvation, which led to cannibalism. Coming back to the question, some might ask what disturbed elements would be in Moby Dick? I would theorize ‘hallucination’ and ‘mythical creatures of the sea’. I have never seen Moby Dick before, but I would say that the reason why these two elements exist in the book is that once the men reach the point of starvation, they will start to hallucinate to the point where they do not know if what they are seeing is real or not. They will hear voices speaking to them out in the sea, and they will probably encounter the sperm whale for quite some time. Perhaps they will meet mythical creatures that humans do not believe are real. Perhaps they will hear voices echoing out into the sea, and it will sort of lure them to join with the water. Coming back to the article, I like how King included a short paragraph of Melville’s life with his published novel, Moby Dick. It saddened me knowing that he suffered a lot while thinking his book is not worth the goal that he was aiming for. I believe nobody deserves to feel this way, and all of his effort in creating the book should be praised and remembered for generations to come. This article is actually a stepping stone for the book because it feels like I am getting a little bit familiar with the materials, and I really do hope I find a lot of hidden meanings while reading Moby Dick. And at the same time, I do hope the book contains dark elements that I mentioned above.