Studies in American Fiction, March 22nd, 1993
Herman Melville's 'Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile' has been unjustly dismissed as diffuse and having a vague conclusion. On the contrary, the book tells the story of the human condition. The opening of the book finds narrator and reader submersed in the American myth of faultless heroes and pure motives. Before long the story has reached biblical proportions and these myths began to waiver. Eventually Melville exposes the shortcomings in American and biblical myths and brilliantly portrays the spiritual emptiness of mankind.
If there was ever a moment when Herman Melville stood a cha...
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