The History of Whaling in the 1800's

Early 1800's: With the discovery of the whale-rich "onshore grounds" off the coast of South America, the Pacific Ocean is an increasingly popular destination for American whaling vessels.

1812-1815: War of 1812: As during the Revolution, American whaling vessels are preyed upon by the British Navy; several dozen are either seized or destroyed, and among American whaling ports only Nantucket continues to send out voyages.

1818: After the War of 1812, the whaling industry enters its "Golden Age." Among the investors attracted to the industry is novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who, while visiting a relative in Sag Harbor, Long Island, invests in a whaling firm.

1820: The Nantucket whaleship Essex is stove by a sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific. Fearing cannibals in the nearby Marquesas Islands, the majority of the crew members crowd into three small whaling boats and head east on a 3,000 mile journey towards the coast of Peru. When two of the boats are recovered nearly three months later (the third boat is lost), the surviving crew members admit to sustaining themselves with the bodies of their shipmates.

1840: A 21-year-old Herman Melville signs aboard the whaler Acushnet out of Fairhaven. He will remain at sea for more than three years.

Shall we critique?

     Moby Dick displays Melville's rhetorical skills, but it also presents running chapters of ennui. He may have the ability to create an eloquent metaphor, but that will not keep the reader to continue reading his six hundred paged novel. At some points in the book I develop a high level of interests and enjoy the purpose Melville conveys, but other times, I'm am exhausted from reading the lingering nonsense about religion and the whole encyclopedia about whales. 
     There are some agreements and partial disagreements I have on one of Melville's critic, Charles Olson's critique on Moby Dick. Olsen stated, "The man made a mess of things. He got all balled up with Christ. He made a white marriage... Melville took an awful licking. He was bound to. He was an original, aboriginal. A beginner. It happened that way to the dreaming men it takes to discover America." I understand Olson is describing Melville as a dreamer and a beginner, and I, in all honesty agree with that statement. Moby Dick is obviously a novel inspired by Melville's voyages of finally going out to sea of which he always wanted to do, considering that he wrote the novel a couple years after his journey, but his infinite details of futile information about the see has no relation to the concept of the text, making him just a dreamer who is writing in his diary. Now, I partially agree and disagree on Olsen's statement of Melville making a mess of things and being too tied up with religion. Melville included unnecessary information about religious topics and strained his novel with biblical terms, which made the book too long and too dull, but although the numerous amounts of biblical allusions were not necessarily needed in every aspect of the book, Melville did not "make a mess of things" by using them. It is what gives the novel a significant theme and an understandable authorial purpose as well by Ishmael being a body for sympathy, Ahab a symbol of evil, and the Great White Whale symbol of superiority and God as superior, making man seem inferior in nature.

     Melville's mistake was writing Moby Dick from a dreamer's view and included irrelevant information relating to religion, but his biblical allusions did have a fair role in the novel by developing the significant theme and tone of the novel. I admire the interesting themes and points Melville conveys in Moby Dick, but his rambling of meaningless knowledge screams 'beginner', as Olson has mentioned. Melville strives to behold an eloquent and rhetorical language throughout his novel with the usage of metaphors, referring to religion and facts on whales, but his constant and incessant speeches bore the reader and depletes the main idea, hauling them away from the concept of the novel.