Herman Melville and the Problem of Evil

Melville and the Problem of Evil 99
in defeat. It is only at the very end of Moby Dick that Cap-
tain Ahab realizes completely that his fight has been from the
beginning doomed; even when the realization comes to him
at the end of the third day’s struggle, he hurls his final har-
poon in defiance and by his courage rescues some value out of
the general chaos. In Pierre there is nothing comparable and
thus no real tragic emotion. The hero simply sinks deeper and
deeper until the very terms good and evil have lost their
meaning.

Pierre’s attitude seems clearly to reflect that of Melville,
who makes him say, “If to follow Virtue to her uttermost
vista, where common souls never go; if by that I take hold on
hell, and the uttermost virtue, after all, prove but a betray-
ing pander to the monstrousest vice,—then close in and
crush me, ye stony walls, and into one gulf let all things
tumble together!”²³ One can safely generalize, I believe, that
tragedy does not spring from such complete despair. In 1856
Melville visited his old friend briefly in England. Hawthorne
reports a conversation that indicates Melville’s attitude dur-
ing these years:

Melville as he always does, began to reason of Providence
and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken,
and informed me that he had “pretty much made up his mind
to be annihilated”; but still he does not seem to rest in that
anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a
definite belief. It is strange how he persists—and has persisted
ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wander-
ing to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as
the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither be-
lieve, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest
and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a
religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and
reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better
worth immortality than most of us.²⁴

In Pierre he dropped the plummet deeper into the well of
speculation than perhaps at any other time, and his failure to

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