Essay about Comparing Billy Budd and the Life of Melville

Frederick Douglass, in his narrative, “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” recounts his atrocious former life as a slave. The purpose of Douglass’s narrative is to inform his audience about what slaves experienced on a day-to-day basis. While recounting his experiences, Douglass adopts a methodical tone in order to make his account more comprehensible for the abolitionists. Douglass’s use of rhetorical techniques, such as tone, imagery and diction, help express the many hardships he and many other saves encountered. He incorporates his encounter of being a former slave to help promote his attempt to put an end to slavery.

The phrase “art imitates life” can be used to describe many works of literature. Authors and the stories they write are often influenced by the changing world around them along with the evolution of new perspectives and ways of thinking regarding a subject. While this may sound simply like a common literary trope, it is of great importance and significance in many genres of literature. None has this been more apparent than in both the anti-slavery and women’s empowerment movement of the early to mid-1800s. Two major influence authors in their respective subjects, Frederick Douglass and Fanny Fern, were heavily influenced by the changing societal trends of the time of which they expressed through their writing. Douglass’s speech in particular “What to a Slave is the 4th of July?” was heavily influenced by Douglass’s own personal experience as a slave as well as the rising prominence of the abolitionist movement in the United States. By referencing the contradictory nature of the Constitution relegating personal freedoms exclusively to white, property owning males, Douglass bluntly references the systematic inequalities faced by people of color in the United States. Never would the works of an African American author, especially one challenging the established institution of slavery, gain so much attention if not for the anti-slavery movement and shifting perspectives surrounding it.

Although Washington could not describe himself as a revolutionist, his present state of external conflict forged him into the figure engraved in our minds today. Herman Melville (1819-1891), author of the literary classic Moby Dick, possessed much experience that contributed to the setting and message of his writing. Although Melville never became a midshipman, or naval sailor, he can attribute a great deal of influence for writing to his life while at sea. Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor tells the story of a young mariner and his induction on the H.M.S. Bellipotent. From unstable relationships to cabin revolt, Billy, the main character, faces a series of conflicts that ultimately creates varying images of him in the differing minds of those around him. In view of all of this, Melville, in Billy Budd, Sailor, communicates to readers the theme that “conflict, internal or external, exists as the framework of destiny,” through Billy's initial reaction to the crew as a result of enlistment on the Bellipotent, the rumor of mutiny, and his

In the documentation of his early life, his views on slavery are not directly expressed. I think this is in part because he was too young to know any different. While his early life did not offer much opinion on his part, it did start the foundation for his opposition to slavery. All that he was ever exposed to. Slavery was his reality at this time and because it was

He wondered how someone who hated slavery could promise to protect it in all southern states. He wondered how someone who insisted that blacks were human could support racism. Why would he want to follow Lincoln?

The fireside poets were popular at a time when the United States was a new nation, suffering pressure from outside governments as well as growing pains of its own. Historical events such as the War of 1812 threatened to overwhelm the young democracy. At the same time, there was the beginning of the push for westward expansion, and the beginnings of the schism over slavery which would culminate in the Civil War. The fireside poets represented a movement to involve the reader in events of the current day through literature. Most of them had causes about which they were passionate, and they incorporated this into their writing, inviting readers to consider highly charged issues such as abolition, workers’ rights, and immigration on a level that was more personal than had previously been done. Literature has frequently been reflective of the social and political climate in which it is written. The fireside poets were one of the first groups to take their views to a more real-world level, in founding magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly (John Greenleaf Whittier), supporting public projects such as Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (William Cullen Bryant), and even founding a political party and running for Congress (John Greenleaf Whittier). The lead-up to the Civil War was also weighing on the minds of many, which prompted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write “Paul Revere’s Ride”, an encouragement to a young country facing a serious conflict. Far from

In her 1945 article, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller illustrates a world in which “there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves”, and where men hold “the belief that Woman was made for Man”. Two books, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Woman in the Nineteenth Century, provide male and female perspective in the 19th century. These separate texts exemplify two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, Woman in the Nineteenth Century provides perspective of the feminine experience in a male dominated world while Moby Dick portrays a society from a male point of view and experiences woman as subservient to himself.

letters that he wrote to Jefferson Davis (President of the South) that he didn’t want to continue in

ran .He is often referred to as “Boy Hero of the Confederacy” and he is really southern. He had a pattern that was a war spy .

When Abraham Lincoln gave his Cooper Union Address it is doubtful that he knew its impact on the country and ultimately the future of the Union. In his Cooper Union Address, future president Abraham Lincoln thoroughly rebuked the southern Democrats Stephen A. Douglas’ statements about the Republicans’ slavery stance by using not only the oppositions wording against them, he supported his arguments with true examples sited from the signatories of the Constitution and their past voting record, from information gleaned during his career as a lawyer, and from his sense of honor and ethics. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party had some very strong constituents, mainly those with very strong Free Soil tendencies. For this reason along with personal beliefs on Lincoln’s part the Republicans, led by Lincoln in the presidential election, were strongly against the expansion of slavery into the territories

The works of Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass are both centered on the topic of slavery. Although both texts are similar in the sense that they focus directly on the theme of slavery, the functions of each work differ drastically. The differences in the works stem from both the style of the text, and the way that this style functions in accordance with the reader. Although Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno is drawn from an actual event, Melville embellishes and alters the event in the style of prose. The prose style used by Melville invites the reader to question the story while understanding that the majority of the work is fictional. The confusion of Captain Delano is brought onto the reader, and therefore engages the reader because of the limited point of view the story is told in. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells of actual events that occurred using twentieth and twenty-first century plain style. This style of writing does not ask the reader to question what he is saying, but feel his emotions as they read the narrative. Although readers may understand both works to be stories about slavery written differently in terms of style, I argue that the way the texts are written sets up the readers interpretation of them. Melville and Douglass differ because Melville’s work invites the reader to think, whereas Douglass’s work invites the reader to feel.

Use some specific examples from the letter. What was his life like on the plantation as a slave? What is the overall meaning of his letter?

Paragraph 6: At one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy. One of his poems was about an egalitarian view of the races and his attitude in life reflected many of the racial prejudices common to the nineteenth -century his opposition to slavery was not necessarily based on belief in the equality of races.

Melville was an American writer and literary scholar who had many views and opinions on different aspects of American life and culture during the 19th century. He was a well renowned literary who didn’t hold back any thoughts he had to any issues plaguing that time period. Something Melville was truly passionate about was how corrupt American business was at the time and how it served little interest in the people. Melville wrote many short stories and passages about his beliefs on the matter and how he believed things could be changed around for the better. His slight anti-establishment views and the way he perceived the upper classes influence on business also were important things that he touched on his works. Lets take a look at Herman Melville and how he perceived 19th century American business practices.

Donald Yannella, author of New Essays on Billy Budd, says that “at the heart lies an obsession with justice," as is exhibited in Herman Melville’s classics, Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor. Herman Melville was an American author born on August 1, 1819 in New York, New York. The author wrote many books and penned poetry in his later years. Best known for his novel Moby Dick, Melville was not regarded as one of America’s greatest writers until after his death on September 28, 1891. Not achieving his dream job, and with his family in shambles, he boarded the St Lawrence in 1839. His time spent at sea would prove to be useful, as the majority of his books take place on the high seas.