On the eve of the Civil War, Herman Melville wrote in a letter that he was disillusioned with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish.” Not short of two years later would Melville publish what would arguably be his greatest work, and in it take on the task of deconstructing Emerson’s transcendentalist ideas in a cautionary tale that would warn against the danger of both the tyranny of one and the passivity of many within a democracy. In his novel Moby-Dick, Melville crafts a narrative that serves as a call for action, creating in Ahab a character that is representative of the failures of transcendentalism and in Ishmael a martyr for democratic ideals who oscillates between the part of observer and interpreter in a way that intends to revolutionize not just the text, but also the roles of the reader and the American novelist.
Author: Nicole Woch
Winner of the 2016 Meringoff High School Essay Contest, Nicole Woch attended Stanford Online High School, where she wrote the essay above for Dr. Douglas Kerr of the English Department in the course "Making Moby-Dick." She is currently a freshman at Colorado College. At this time, she is still undecided in regard to her major, but she is considering Computer Science and English.