Herman Melville and the Problem of Evil

Melville and the Problem of Evil 89
go hard with the writers of tragedy,” for evil is the very
theme of tragedy. Because of this relationship I must pause
here long enough to consider briefly just what tragedy is.
The aspect of tragedy most pertinent to us this afternoon has
been summarized by Philo Buck:

It was the Greek . . . who discovered a virtue in doubt, and
a mental exhilaration in exploring the limitations of man’s
nature and the “antagonism that lies at the heart of the world.”
. . . It is this fundamental human paradox, man’s aspirations
and powers, his pitiful limitations and death, . . . that allowed
room for the attitude we define as tragic. It is not his weak-
ness alone, for then his fate, like that of a senseless beast, is
only pathetic, if not irrelevant; it is not his strength alone,
for then he is either a senseless boaster or a demigod.

Again, tragedy is essentially rebellion against the paradox
of this human lot, the uprush of man’s reason and will against
the narrow confines of mortal destiny. . . . Man is not in
a congenial world; the gods, the laws of nature, the ways of
other men, the whole manner of life, are indifferent to the fate
of the best and wisest. . . .

Out of this catastrophe that is human destiny, tragedy
would, if it can, rescue some pattern and significance for hu-
man fate. Tragedy is an escape from the ills of life, but an
escape not by shutting the doors and closing the ears against
the uproar, but by vividly facing human destiny at its worst,
challenging its malevolence, and gazing steadily at the heart
of the pain in search for a human value. For the tragic possi-
bilities lie within the nature of man himself, and are due to his
ability to dare to protest against his destiny. Tragedy is re-
bellion with a conscious purpose, to rescue from the wreck
something that man may yet cling to.⁸

Now Herman Melville had seen evil in Liverpool and on
Pacific islands; he had even begun to speculate about its
origin. He had apparently some conception of the importance
of the tragic flaw, of the essential crack in the protagonist’s
armor that allows Fate, in modern tragedy, to pursue him;
for in Mardi it is apparently Taji’s blood guilt in killing the
old priest that prevents him from finding Yillah and it is his
own fatal determination that brings death to his two oldest
companions and finally to himself. But the whole conflict

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