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Chapter 3Romanticism (4) Herman Melville (1819-1891) Contents Life experiece His relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne Analysis and appreciation of Moby Dick Plot Overview Synopsis and understanding of Chapter41 Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs Symbols Life Experience His relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne In the summer of 1850 Melville purchased an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the community of Pittsfield in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Berkshire was then home to a number of prominent literary figures such as Fanny Kemble, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and, in Lenox, less than six miles from Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The two authors met for the first time in Stockbridge on August 5, 1850, on a picnic excursion hosted by David Dudley Field. Hawthorne was forty-six; Melville was thirty-one. Analysis and appreciation of Moby Dick Plot Overview Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers inn, sharing a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. Ishmael comes to appreciate the mans generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales. Analysis of Major Characters Ishmael Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesnt reveal much about himself to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of committing suicide—he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It is apparent from Ishmaels frequent digressions on a wide range of subjects—from art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and literature—*that he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a whaling