Redburn: His First Voyage - Herman Melville (week 2)
Details
NOTE: Click on "Read more" to see the entire meetup description and links.
Wellington Redburn is a fifteen-year-old from New York who dreams of following in the footsteps of his deceased father. He sets out on a voyage to England, but is quickly confronted by the bitter demands of ship life, the abject horror of poverty in Liverpool, and revelation of the world's moral depravity.
Inspired by Melville's own coming-of-age aboard a cargo ship, Redburn (1849) is a confessional tale of lost innocence. As he gradually awakens to an understanding of evil, "Redburn comes to realize that not only is his earthly father lost forever, but that there is no spiritual father to look after the welfare of mankind either." (John Bernstein)
But the novel is also "arguably [Melville's] funniest work" (according to Hester Blum), a fascinating sea journal in its own right, and understated by Melville himself to be "a plain, straightforward, amusing narrative of personal experience... no metaphysics, no conic-sections, nothing but cakes & ale."
Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Week 1: Chapters 1-22
Week 2: Chapters 23-42
Week 3: Chapters 43 -62
Redburn:
Supplemental:
- Noetic podcast with Jonathan Cook
This meetup is part of the series In the Belly of the Whale.