History Alive!  Enrichment Resources

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” So wrote Herman Melville, the author of the famous novel Moby Dick. As American literature grew to maturity in the 19th century, American authors chose mightier and mightier themes. Their efforts quickly led to a distinctive national literature. It didn’t go as far back as European literary traditions, but it was just as ambitious and varied. And with the coming of Mark Twain, Americans could boast that their literature had developed a writer equal to any in the world.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville’s “mighty themes” came from his own experiences. Born in New York City in 1819, he showed little promise as a child. He failed at several jobs until he enlisted as a sailor on a whaling ship and spent four years at sea. Back home, he charmed his family with stories of his adventures. He realized he was on to something, and began writing.

Melville published his greatest novel, Moby Dick, in 1851. The hero, Captain Ahab, has lost a leg trying to catch a huge white whale called Moby Dick. Ahab sets off to confront the whale again.

Melville wrote in a slow, wandering style. But to the readers of 1850, who had never seen a TV show or a movie, Moby Dick was a rip-roaring adventure story. It was also a thoughtful study about wanting something you shouldn’t. In the end, Ahab’s ship tracks down Moby Dick—and Ahab dies trying to kill the whale. Only one crewmember survives to tell the story.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

While composing Moby Dick, Melville moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. There his neighbor was another writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne had been born to a Puritan family in nearby Salem, the site of witch burnings in 1692. Shamed by this part of his heritage, Hawthorne made the dark side of Puritan society his mighty theme. He used a high-sounding, elegant style to portray early New England life in such novels as The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne’s tales often had a spooky feel. In his short story Young Goodman Brown, the hero meets the devil. Is it a nightmare? Is it his imagination? Or is it real? Whichever, the devil tells him, “I helped your grandfather, the constable [policeman], when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village.” Through such haunting passages, Hawthorne exposed the violence underlying America’s Puritan ancestry.

Louisa May Alcott

In the early 1840s, Hawthorne lived at Brook Farm, near Boston. The group that started Brook Farm tried to live by the Transcendentalist philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Everyone shared equally in the work and profits. Among the farm’s leaders was Amos Bronson Alcott. Hawthorne helped inspire Alcott’s young daughter, Louisa May, to become a writer herself.

Alcott’s mighty theme was the everyday life of half of America’s people: its girls and women. Unlike Hawthorne and the Transcendentalists, she wrote in an easy, natural style. Her biggest success was Little Women. The book sold so well that she wrote several sequels. It remains popular today.

Little Women is the story of four young sisters and their mother, whom they call Marmee. Each chapter presents a typical adventure for outgoing girls of Civil War times, and usually ends with a lesson.

In one chapter, the sisters decide they don’t want to do their chores. They get so bored that when Marmee decides she won’t do any housework either, they eagerly take her role, only to botch it completely. In the end, Marmee reminds her daughters to “have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.” Alcott’s warm portrayal of sturdy, independent women contributed to America’s growing sense that all people are equal.

Mark Twain

American literature truly reached maturity with Missouri-born Mark Twain in the last half of the 19th century. Twain’s real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His pen name comes from a term used by boat pilots on the Mississippi River to note the water’s depth.

Many people consider Twain to be America’s greatest writer. Like Melville, he often wrote about life on the water—in his case, the Mississippi. Like Hawthorne, he often wrote about America’s shameful past—in his case, slavery. And like Alcott, he often wrote about ordinary people—in his case, the residents of small western towns. Twain then added a few mighty themes of his own and tied them all together with a biting sense of humor.

Perhaps Twain’s most famous book is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Published in 1884, it tells a story that takes place before the Civil War ended slavery. Though widely praised, its depictions of child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and race relations make it controversial even today.

The book’s hero, Huck Finn, sails down the Mississippi River in a raft with Jim, a runaway slave. At one point Jim is returned to slavery, putting Huck in a no-win situation. He can let Jim go and lose a true friend, or he can rescue Jim and commit a crime, since helping a slave escape is illegal (and, to most people around Huck, morally wrong as well). Finn tells the reader, “I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’” He and his friend Tom Sawyer then work together to free Jim.

Mark Twain tackled American themes in a distinctively American style. At the same time, like all great writers, he wrote about subjects and individuals that people everywhere can recognize and appreciate.

Enrichment Activity

1. Create a table with these pieces of information completed:
 

2. When you have completed the table, highlight each theme that at least two of the authors have in common.