7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Originally published 1850 Genre Adventure fiction Preceded by Redburn | 3.8/5 Goodreads Media type Print Country United States of America Followed by Moby-Dick | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS "Neversink" (actually the USS United States).
Contents
Overview
Based on Melville's experiences as a common seaman aboard the frigate USS United States from 1843 to 1844 and stories that other sailors told him, the novel is severely critical of virtually every aspect of American naval life and thus qualifies as Melville's most politically strident work. At the time, though, the one thing that journalists and politicians focused on in the novel was its graphic descriptions of flogging and the horrors caused by its arbitrary use; in fact, because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got into the hands of every member of Congress, White-Jacket was instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U.S. Navy forever. Melville scholars also acknowledge the huge number of parallels between White-Jacket and Billy Budd and view the former as a rich source for possible interpretations of the latter.
The symbolism of the color white, introduced in this novel in the form of the narrator's jacket, is more fully expanded upon in Moby-Dick, where it becomes an all-encompassing "blankness." The mixture of journalism, history, and fiction; the presentation of a sequence of striking characters; the metaphor of a sailing ship as the world in miniature—all of these prefigure his next novel, Moby-Dick.
Characters
This list is not exhaustive.
Publication history
White-Jacket was published in London by Richard Bentley on February 1, 1850, and in New York by Harper & Brothers on March 21, 1850. Melville referred to it and his previous book Redburn as "two jobs which I have done for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood."
Legal impact
At the urging of New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale, whose daughter, Lucy, would later become the fiancee of John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of President Abraham Lincoln, the United States Congress banned flogging on all U.S. ships in September 1850. He was inspired by Melville's "vivid description of flogging, a brutal staple of 19th century naval discipline" in his "novelized memoir" White-Jacket.
The man whom Melville based the fictional Commodore on, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, a former commander of the USS United States (1797), was brought up on a court-martial in 1850 and found guilty on three counts mostly related to "oppression" of junior officers. Jones was relieved of command for two and a half years. In 1853, President Millard Fillmore reinstated him and in 1858, the United States Congress restored his pay.