A typology of innocence in Herman Melville's Pierre ; or, the ambiguities, Billy budd, sailor, and Moby-Dick ; or, the whale

From pioneering to current criticism of Melville, treatment of the idea of innocence has received a varied range of interpretation. The extreme critical positions reveal an application of either strict moral principles or equally strict secular ethics. They are generally delimited by the application of “horological” (terrestrial) criteria and fall short of the religious dimension within which innocence essentially resides. Yet it is the “chronometrical” (celestial) nimbus surrounding innocence which lends Melville's writing its tragic and transcendental character. Underscoring a continuing tension of ambiguities, innocence is portrayed with both horological and chronometrical features. This thesis will suggest that one of the most provocative aspects of Melville's thought is his conception of innocence as it moves beyond prelapsarian and tragic forms, as depicted in the cases of Billy Budd and Pip on the one hand and in Starbuck and Vere on the other, to a paradoxical form of transcendental innocence, as portrayed startlingly in Ahab. The organizational pattern is as follows: Chapter 1 explores the counterpointing of innocence and evil in Melville's thought generally. Brief allusion is made to novels preceding Moby-Dick, demonstrating Melville's longstanding preoccupation with variations of innocence. The concept of capital sin is used as a heuristic device, with the sins of lust, envy, and pride considered sequentially. Chapter 2 stands as the fulcrum of the entire thesis. It develops Melville's use of the instruments-of-time metaphor beyond that offered by criticism up to now. It draws initially upon the history of the marine chronometer to stress not only the difficulty of synchronizing relative and absolute time, but of emphasizing Plinlimmon's (and indeed Melville's) belief that a coincidence of the two is possible, although highly improbable. To illustrate Pierre's difficulty in finding his chronometrical bearing, Chapter 2 explores Melville's conscious allusions to Neoplatonic philosophy (Plotinus) and Welsh geography (Mount Plinlimmon), both of which Melville embodies in the ambiguous figure, Plotinus Plinlimmon. That Pierre accidentally comes under the indirect tutelage of Plinlimmon accentuates Melville's implicit belief that an attempt to sustain a chronometrical ideal, though it fails, is nevertheless admirable. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 absorb the instruments-of-time analogy as a fundamental premise to consolidate the fact that relative/absolute bifurcation was consistently expressed by Melville throughout his entire career. Chapter 3 considers prelapsarian as opposed to tragic innocence, embodied respectively in Billy Budd and Captain Vere, since both reinforce the notion of a chronometrical world at odds with a horological ethic. Chapter 4 examines the limits of horology by considering, first, Melville's use of resurrection motifs and, second, by contrasting the complex vision of Ahab with the simple intuitions of Starbuck. Chapter 5 develops the tragedy of innocence in a portrayal of the ironic defeat of the transcendentally-oriented man. It considers Ishmael's blend of myth and actuality concerning Ahab—whether the preliminary mythical accounts of Ahab delivered by Peleg and Elijah are confirmed or contradicted by later actual accounts delivered by various other characters, including Ishmael himself. The Conclusion brings back into focus Melville's instruments-of-time metaphor and closes with an ambiguity which Melville apparently shared with many gifted writers: that frequently, in the tempestuous seas of life, innocence must drown before it can survive.