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Melville first turned the spotlight on sharks amid the diverse marine life he described in Mardi, before he zoomed in on whales in Moby-Dick. Sharks are depicted as cruelty incarnate and as symbolic marine animals occupy the second most important position after whales in his works.
Which is more savage and brutal, shark or man? This seems to be an implicit question Melville poses in his books where sharks appear as a metaphor of cold-hearted and merciless men in the cruel sea of the human world and as a symbol of horrible death.
Human brutality, particularly white civilized men’s, directed to both animals and humans is vividly depicted and strongly criticized throughout his books. We can see his deep love of life, human or animal equally, behind the pitiful and pathetic scenes in which cattle, pigs, geese, and whales are atrociously killed for human profit and welfare. Human barbarity toward humans is most luridly evinced in wars whose inhuman cold-bloodedness is partially narrated in White-Jacket, and the gruesome naval battle fought under “the grinning Man-in-the-Moon” in Israel Potter epitomizes human intrinsic savagery beneath the mask of civilization.
Sharks followed Melville throughout his life and in the poems he wrote toward the end of his life, they reappear as an agent of cruel death.
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