On Melville's Tragic Tendency And Its Reflections In His Works

Herman Melville (1819-1891) is now openly recognized as one of the greatestwriters in the 19th American literary history in particular for his masterpiece MobyDick, a great book with heart-shaking whaling experience, philosophical meditation ofrealism and fantasy, vested with the poetic coloring of romance. However, in his lifetime, Melville never achieved the recognition until the 1920s when "MelvilleRevival"was launched after more than thirty years of silence and Melville establishedhimself as a great master of arts. Since the "Melville Revival", numerous articles havesprung up covering the study of Melville himself and his works.After a thorough study, the author is surprised to find that though lots of workhas been done to study his masterpiece Moby Dick and its tragic elements, littleconcern has been extended to his other later tragic novels Pierre and Billy Budd andthe tragic elements in them, even less to say the common elements reflected from thethree novels as well as the relationship between Melville's tragic tendency and thethree.Melville had a hard life full of failures and frustrations. The mother'sindifference, the family's decline, radical changes from the transition of social forms,especially repeated failure in writing together with his inherent disposition tomelancholy combined to form his strong tragic tendency, which was definitelyreflected in his works, especially in his great tragic novels Moby Dick, Pierre andBilly Budd.In the first half of the paper, the author gives a systematic analysis of tragic fateof Ahab and Billy Budd sociologically upon the influence of Melville's tragictendency and further makes a broad study of good and evil ethically andphilosophically. Ahab's grand revengeful purpose of killing Moby Dick and evillurking in everything led to his doom while the conflict between nature andcivilization, good and evil brought about Billy's persecution.In the last part, the author explores the tragic fate of Ahab and Pierre with thehelp of shame psychology and Jung's psychological types upon the influence of...