Critical Essay | Critical Essay by R. Scott Kellner

Critical Essay by R. Scott Kellner

SOURCE: “Sex, Toads, and Scorpions: A Study of the Psychological Themes in Melville's Pierre,” in The Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1, Spring, 1975, pp. 5-20.

In the following essay, Kellner explores Melville's treatment of several psychological themes in Pierre, focusing on the relationship between ideal love and instinctive sex, and between sex and death.

Although Melville was aware of the difficulties in pursuing half-conscious thoughts, he nevertheless persisted with psychological inquiries in his novels, probing “the endless, winding way,—the flowing river in the cave of man.”¹ Melville saw the difference between man's conscious behavior and his unconscious desires as the difference between an open plain and a dark thicket. He believed his job as novelist was equal to the pioneer-explorers of his time, that an author was a scout “following the Indian trail” (p. 84) leading into the thickets of the mind. He was aware, though, of the dangers...
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