Melville's Poems

Funny thing is I hated Melville, almost more than I do the Red Sox or the Colts. I will tell you that is a feat in itself to accomplish. The only book I disliked more than Benito Cereno was Plato's Republic. Now to understand my dislike for Plato, I always told others if I had to go back in time for only one mission my one mission would be to set Plato or Socrates, whoever I found first, on fire. Graphic I know but I guess it shows Melville and I have kindred hearts for gory violence. An exaggeration, of course, don't think I'm some Rhoda from the Bad Seed. I would never kill a 10 year old with my tap show just because he won the penmanship pin. Now that I have probably thoroughly confused you with my random tidbits of information let us go back to the matter at hand of discussing Melville's Poems.It was probably easy to notice me bubbling up in class discussion about his poems. I enjoyed them a lot and that came as a surprise in itself considering I didn't like his book. His poems added history and interesting facts and details don't. Yet, he maintained a way of having hidden emotions and complex undertone many poets have. His merely was hidden under history and bloodshed.

As I had mentioned in class, I feel Melville was more on McClellan's side than on Grant's. "The helmed dilated Lucifer--Honor to Grant the brave", the sarcasm of honoring Grant is quite hard to miss. He, obviously, was not Grant's biggest supporters. Why else say that Grant was basically the Antichrist leading the devil into Richmond if you did not have some kind of animosity towards the person? This makes me question back to Melville's thought behind slavery. If he did support McClellan then he probably would have been one of the men to side with McClellan's Presidential campaign. In McClellan's stance, he stated he wanted to end the war and compromise the South back into the Union. The only way to have this accomplished would mean McClellan was aware the slaves would more than likely not be free. Ever since reading Benito Cereno, I have questioned whether Melville truly supported slavery or not. This connection may merely be something I randomly put together but it may be something to consider. Maybe Melville truly was against abolition. He may not have been outright saying he hated blacks but maybe he felt the way many felt; blacks were ignorant savages that had way to act if given freedom. His writing may have changed and so did my opinion of his writing but the true underlying message may have stayed the same. It would put pieces together of the puzzle to state why he wrote what he did. Yet, no one can probably know for sure except Melville himself.