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. Melville had mixed feelings universe, a meaning that surely went beyond theabout Emerson, calling him a Plato who spoke day-to-day experience of human beings, found inthrough his nose.Yet he was pleasantly sur- Melville a sympathetic sensibility.279 Ffate A key concept in Melville s work, which navy.The book appeared in the United States inoften focuses on the extent to which human beings March 1850, during congressional debates aboutexercise free will.Melville s characters, such as the practice.Some, such as Rear Admiral SamuelAhab and Pierre, seem to have a destiny they can- Franklin, claimed that Melville s book had morenot deflect, yet especially in such works as CLAREL, influence in abolishing corporal punishment in theMelville seems to argue against determinism, or at navy than anything else.In fact, the book probablyleast to consider the concepts of fate and free will appeared too late to have had any decisive influ-as open questions.ence, but it certainly helped to create the consen-sus that led to passage of a bill outlawing flogging inflogging Corporal punishment administered by the navy not long after the book was published.beating with a whip or a rod.Corporal punishmentwas the norm in the U.S.military in the 19th cen- Fly, Eli James Murdock (1817 1854) Friend oftury, but in the navy, where the risk of mutiny was Herman Melville.Eli Fly s family lived in Green-ever present, it seemed to be imposed for nearly bush, New York, not far from the Melville homeevery offense however minor.Punishment in the in LANSINGBURGH.He attended the Albany Acad-navy generally took the form of flogging, in which emy, where he was a classmate of Melville s brotherthe victim was stripped of his shirt and tied at the Gansevoort, and he served an apprenticeship in theankles and wrists to a ship s hatch covering.Ordi- law office of Melville s uncle PETER GANSEVOORT innarily the entire crew would be called on deck to ALBANY.In 1838, after Melville received his engi-witness as a set number of lashings with a cat-o - neering certificate from Lansingburgh Academy,nine-tails (a short-handled whip with nine knotted he briefly courted Eli s sister Helen.In the spring ofleather thongs) was administered to the miscreant s 1840, Fly, having turned down Peter Gansevoort snaked back, usually by the boatswain s mate.offer of a promotion, accompanied Melville, then atSuch punishment often left a man scarred for loose ends, on his trip west in search of adventurelife emotionally, if not physically.The degrada- and, possibly, a job working for his cousin ROBERTtion of flogging so impressed and enraged Melville MELVILL in Galena, Illinois.Hiking and hitching ridesduring his stint in the navy in 1843 44 that the along the Erie Canal, the two friends visited Romebook detailing his naval service, WHITE-JACKET, is and Buffalo in New York State before taking a steam-filled with diatribes against this particular form of ship across the Great Lakes to Detroit and Chicagopunishment.and traveling on to Galena, perhaps by stagecoach.Melville published White-Jacket during a period In Galena, Melville and Fly helped Robert withof intense public controversy about flogging in the farm work, staying until after the harvest was in.280 Fourier, Charles 281Melville published White-Jacket s highly critical attack on flogging in the U.S.Navy at a time when the subject was amajor public controversy.(Library of Congress)After returning east only to find that there was on the site of modern-day Rome, New York, Fortno work in Lansingburgh, Melville and Fly moved Stanwix was rebuilt in 1758 by the English generaltogether to NEW YORK CITY, where they found John Stanwix.Afterward, however, the fort fell intorooms that cost $2.50 per week.Fly landed a job a state of disrepair until it was again rebuilt early inas a copyist, but Melville decided to sign aboard a the Revolutionary War, this time by the patriots,whaler.who called the site Fort Schuyler.In 1777, while inIn March 1851, learning that Fly was ill, Melville command of the fort, Peter Gansevoort and his 750took time out from work on MOBY-DICK to visit his men defended the strategic outpost from a siege byold friend, accompanying him from Greenbush to 1,700 Tories and allied Indians, thus preventing theSpringfield, Massachusetts, where Fly caught a train British from reinforcing General John Burgoyne sto Brattleboro, Vermont, to take the waters.By this troops before the Battle of Saratoga.In later days,time Fly was an invalid, worn down by prolonged the site was renamed Fort Stanwix and accordedillness and a series of terrible jobs.Melville would the status of a national monument.use some of Fly s experiences and characteristicswhen writing his allegory of alienation, BARTLEBY, Fourier, Charles (1772 1837) French socialTHE SCRIVENER. theorist who argued for the reorganization of soci-ety into scientifically based, self-sufficient commu-Fort Stanwix Site of the heroic Revolutionary nities
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