Hermann Melville "Moby Dick"

The aim of the course paper

In this course paper, I propose an investigation of how Melville uses the sea as a literary space in which to search for a more complete, but ever-elusive vision of truth. Melville wrote in ―Hawthorne and his Mosses,―it is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite‖. His choice to take on the whale as his subject and the ocean as his setting show his courage to proceed into what could have easily turned out to be literary suicide. Using Ishmael ‘s voice, he conveys the kind of faith he must have had in order to delve into this grand project: [S]mall erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught — nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, Patience! (Moby-Dick). While he recognizes the impossibility of his task, he takes it on with the same attitude he must have summoned on his first whaling excursion. In my own decision to study and interact with his words, I hope in some small way to honor his brave literary voyage.