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Abstract |
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Melville’s fifth book, White-Jacket depicts the world in a man-of-war during the first half of the 19th century.It
is, however, not a documentary or nonfiction per se, but rather a semi-imaginative reorganization of Melville’s
experiences as a man-of-war’s man on his way back home from the Pacific.
To Melville, a man-of-war was something abhorrent and loathsome, filled “with the spirit of Belial and all
unrighteousness,”and a “fighting man［was］but a fiend.”His belief and principle were“justice and humanity,”from
which standpoint he harshly criticized rigidly hierarchical structures and tyrannical systems in the Navy.
Melville’s viewpoint is assumed by the protagonist, a main-top-man dubbed White-Jacket, who overlooks the
globe in the daytime and outer space at night from the mainmast head. The white jacket he is clad in is likened to
or equated with a“shroud,”a“white-washed man-of-war schooner,”and a“white shark,”in any case being a symbol
of death a man-of-war could inflict upon people,and in the connection with Melville’s next book,Moby-Dick,it turns
out to be a prototype for the monstrous white whale.
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