Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses" and literary connections to Dickinson, Hawthorne, and Poe

American Literature

Perverse Preoccupation with Humanity's Evil: Analyses of the works of Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, and Dickinson

In understanding our nature as humans, there can be no other more effective means of conveying humanity's feelings and beliefs about life than works of literature. Through literature, writers subjectively interpret their realities as they experience and perceive them, expressing these realities to other people in the form of prose or poem. This paper discusses and analyzes these subjective realities and feelings about human life in the works of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson.

This paper posits that through Herman Melville's commentary, Hawthorne and His Mosses," he clearly illustrates and elucidates the prevalent theme of the literary writers cited above. That is, in his essay, Melville provides clarity in elucidating Hawthorne's (as well as Poe's and Dickinson's) view of evil as it is represented in his literary works. Each author illustrates their own scenario and representation of humanity's perverse preoccupation in defeating the evil -- which, ironically, reside within themselves -- a point that is illustrated in the texts that follow, through the analyses of these four writers' works: "Moby Dick" by Melville, "The House of the Seven Gables" by Hawthorne, " "I felt a funeral, in my brain" and "My life had stood -- a loaded gun-" by Dickinson, and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Giving perspective to the path that this essay is going to take is Melville's contemplative essay on Hawthorne's writing entitled, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." In this commentary, Melville reflects on the author's penchant for illustrating the "dark half of physical sphere" of human life, specifically on humanity's attempt to create meaning to their lives through morality. That is, through depictions of a rigidly conservative and moralistic human society, what inevitably results from Hawthorne's work is not morality and its benefits to human life, but the "blackness" of morality, a life spent on an individual's perverse pursuit to attain purification and holiness in the most macabre way. This is indeed true when one is familiar with the works of Hawthorne, citing, among others, his popular short story "Young Goodman Brown."

Melville is not alone in his analysis of Hawthorne's works. Hawthorne himself describes his writing and being a writer as an "...attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us....pure and uncontrollable mischief...the folly of tumbling down...until an accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms." This passage from the preface of Hawthorne's novel "The House of the Seven Gables" brings into lucidity the fact that humanity, stripped of its conventions and norms of morality, shall "tumble down" and be "scattered...in its original atoms" -- that is, humanity shall return to its most natural state, a condition wherein human mind and behavior has no limits, wherein death and insanity is preferred over life and sanity. This kind of preoccupation about the humanity's natural return to do and be evil is reflected in Melville's essay, wherein he contends, "...this black conceit pervades him (Hawthorne)...You may be witched by his sunlight...but there is the blackness of darkness beyond..." That is, beyond the laws of morality lurks behind the evilness of human nature.

Melville subscribes to Hawthorne's implicit portrayal and depiction of humanity's natural and evil nature in his novel, "Moby Dick." Through the character of Ahab, readers witness that his preoccupation to capture Moby Dick is actually his desire to divest himself of his own evil thoughts and feelings. This is illustrated in Chapter 132, wherein Ahab himself questions his real motives for his desire and need to capture the great whale: "...what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me...Is Ahab, Ahab?" similar portrayal of the "hidden evil" is the character of Montresor in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Beyond the cultured and calm manner of Montresor, giving the observer the image of a moral person in him, a madman resides within, a man who is vengeful and intolerant of insults that he plotted to murder Fortunato, the 'unfortunate' individual who have "injured" Montresor. The protagonist's mask is his wealth and personality, and what this mask hides is his insanity and being a murderer.