Part one of term paper
Melville’s primary focus in his classic novel Moby Dick is the evil of mankind, a point of focus consistent with his anti-Transcendental philosophical alignment. In Moby Dick, Melville shows man’s evil toward fellow man and nature through his thoroughly-developed plot and characters, and in the components of the thematic layer un ...

Part two of term paper
... Transcendentalism is the term linked to the Emersonian-Thoreauvian set of beliefs which incorporated the existence of an Oversoul and the benevolent disposition of man as the default one. Such writers as Melville of this time period were opposed to the Transcendental views. The natural opposition to a theory of man’s general benevolence is one of his malevolence toward everything around him; the primary idea behind anti-Transcendentalism was that all human people have a capacity ...