This essay compares the theme of nature as found in Walden by Henry David Thoreau and Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Essentially, Thoreau's conception of nature fits the more positive and optimistic pattern of transcendentalism. Conversely, Melville's approach to nature is darker and more negative. Melville's Moby Dick reflects a universe with considerable Old Testament severity and justice.
Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson both share the transcendentalist philosophy. They are very much alike in that respect. On the other hand, Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne are very similar with regard to their vision of evil. Melville's view of the universe is far more existential than is Thoreau's.
It is interesting that Emerson's positive view of the universe was the most accepted one during the middle portion of the nineteenth century. However, Melville's more negative view of mankind existed side by side with the transcendentalist point of view. In these modern times, Melville's position seems more realistic and closer to life as it really seems to be.
The tragic perspective of Melville is constructed upon the idea that mankind is radically imperfect. This is a very Calvinistic concept not to be discovered at all in Thoreau, whose view of humanity was that there is a correspondence between human beings and nature. The closer one comes to nature, the closer one comes to God, who i.s immanent and within everything.
Of course, Melville also saw a correspondence between mankind and nature, but he did not see this completely positive in Melville's universe was one of justice and the wrath of God. If a person did not adhere to certain principles and behaviors, he or she would suffer for it. Consequently, as was true of Hawthorne, a sense of sin plays a most important part in Melville's philosophical framework. Somehow, Thoreau does not become concerned with sin and mankind's depraved nature, as Calvinism would have it.
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