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Abstract |
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Melville’s partly autobiographical, first-person “I”fiction, Redburn deals with a green country boy’s initiation
into the sea voyage as a sailor and into the cold and vicious human world during hard times.As the story progresses
and develops,however,the focus of the narration and description shifts from the boy’s initiation process to what he
is eventually initiated into,i.e.the cruel and abominable human world,coupled with utter misanthropy and downright
hatred toward it, personified and embodied in the seamen’s leader, Jackson.
The subject and theme of the book is not so much the initiation of the innocent boy into reality and evil as
merciless reality itself facing destitution and evil reaction to it incarnated in Jackson.The author zooms in on cases
of abject poverty by vividly depicting the miseries, vices, woes and deaths, witnessed among the beggars and
poverty-stricken people in Liverpool and among the Irish emigrants plagued, literally, on board the ship back to
America.Toward the end of the book,the plague and distress on the homeward-bound ship recede,followed by the
demise of Jackson and his hate which brings about the deliverance of the sailors and “me.”
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