Evil in the Works of Melville and Emerson Essay - 1736 Words

Evil in the Works of Melville and Emerson Herman Melville, like all other American writers of the mid and late nineteenth century, was forced to reckon with the thoughts and writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson celebrated the untapped sources of beauty, strength, and nobility hidden within each individual. Where Emerson was inclined to see each human soul as a beacon of light, however, Melville saw fit to describe and define the darkness, the bitter and harsh world of reality that could dim, diffuse, and even extinguish light. Each man wrote about life in specific terms, while pointing toward human nature in general. The problem of evil paradoxically separates and unites both authors. Emerson looked inward and Melville†¦show more content†¦In the realm of the soul, distinctions between the sublime and the mundane, the divine and the human, cause and effect, become blurred and disappear (Emerson 294). Emerson promoted the existence of an all encompassing Oversoul which manifested itself in each living being, rath er than a dogmatic conception of God. The inner strength of self-reliance found its source in the Oversoul. Exploration of the soul was a revelation of truth to Emerson. He tried to combat evil by articulating the necessity of the Oversoul to human happiness. As our knowledge of the Oversoul expands and we cultivate our inner life, goodness will eventually displace evil (Braswell 29). Melville stopped well short of this optimistic conclusion. While not categorically denying the existence of a spiritual and solacing soul, Melville notes especially the prevailing bitterness and cruelty of life. Most people existed in a world of darkness; Melvilles fiction reflects this. Ahabs struggle does not take place solely within his tortured mind. It is played out before the reader, his mind (his madness?) actively involving the lives and fates of others as well as challenging the very forces of nature. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some men feel eating in them... all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified in Moby DickShow MoreRelated Comparing Evil in Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville Essay2723 Words   |  11 Pagesproper sense of evil is surely an attribute of a great writer. (98-99) Although he made the remark in a different context, one would naturally associate Hawthorne and Melville with the comment, while Emersons might be one of the last names to mind. For the modern reader, who is often in the habit of assuming that the most profound and incisive apprehension of reality is a sense of tragedy, Emerson seems to have lost his grip. He has often been charged with a lack of vision of evil and tragedy. 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