Herman Melville's professional career as a writer was short-lived, spanning only eleven years. It was between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-six that he published nine novels and a collection of short fiction (Madans vii). The tragedy of his life is that at the end of this period, he appears to have totally given up his writing career and ultimately would work as a customs house inspector, for approximately twenty (20) years, on the docks in New York City. While he merited an obituary in The New York Times, at the time of his death in 1891, he was essentially forgotten. Even his obituary erred in calling him "Henry" Melville.
Melville was born into a middle-class family and had the burden of the support foisted upon him at the age of sixteen (16) due to the death of his father. The need to support a debt-ridden family ultimately would lead him to working as a sailor, the second stint lasting approximately four (4) years. While his record as a sailor was far from stellar (Madans viii), it would provide him the basis of experience that would allow him to write five (5) of his novels, one of which was Moby Dick which was published in 1851. It was neither critically acclaimed nor was it economically successful.
What Moby Dick does represent is a combination of sea adventure, textbook on whaling, a discussion on human obsession, and in part, a look at "man's need to question the boundaries of his existence and do battle, however hopelessly, against an unreasoning and unyielding nature" (Madans ix). More importantly, it represents a writing experience (possibly even obsessive) that was all Melville's own without the interference from the desires of book critics, his own economic needs (to support his family) and others associated with his writing career. It was Melville's obsession with doing things his way instead of going along established norms of behavior that, in the opinion of this writer, characterized his ...