"White-Jacket": An Essay in Interpretation

Abstract

W HEN Babbalanja, Melville's spokesman in Mardi, said, I am intent upon essence of things, mystery that lieth beyond ... that which is beneath seeming, he displayed a desire for literary depth not previously shown by author of Typee and Omoo. Unfortunately for Melville's readers, technique for revealing the essence of things was a wild and whirling style, a set of melodramatic attitudes, a chaotic, fumbling symbolism. Melville's new criticism of life was violent but obscure; there was plenitude but not cohesion. One contemporary reviewer wrote acidly, Mr. Melville has evidently written his unintelligible novel to try his reader's patience, while even friendly Hawthorne tempered his admiration of richness and depths of Mardi by an intelligent regret that Melville had not brooded longer over book. The failure of Mardi was a double blow to Melville. It