Tracking the Pequod Along The Oregon Trail: The Influence of Parkman’s Narrative on Imagery and Characters in Moby-Dick

JA C K S C H E R T IN G Utah State University Tracking the Pequod Along The Ovcgoil Tvciil'. The Influence of Parkman’s Narrative on Imagery and Characters in Moby-Dick The March 1849 issue of the Literary World contained a review of The Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman’s recently published account of his tour on the prairies. The anonymous review was written by Herman Melville for the Duyckinck brothers’ magazine. Less than a year later, the novelist began work on a new book about whaling. The effect of Parkman’s narrative on Melville’s novel has been the subject of two previous scholarly notes.1 This essay sets forth evidence showing that Parkman’s sketches of his venture into the prairies contributed to Melville’s novel in two addi­ tional ways: by directly influencing some of the imagery in Moby-Dick and by providing a prototype for one member of the Pequod’s crew. I. W id e -r o l lin g W a t e r y P rairies Melville alludes to the prairies eighteen times in Moby-Dick, often in striking analogies between the open sea and the vast prairies of the West. To what extent these analogies were based on Melville’s first-hand observa­ tion of the prairies remains an open question. We do know that Melville saw the prairies in 1840 when he took a trip west to visit his uncle in Galena, Illinois. This trip and its possible influence on Melville’s subse­ quent work was examined in 1951 by John Nichol, who postulated that in Illinois Melville accumulated a “massive store of detail and imagery for books he had not yet begun to write.” Recognizing the novelist’s “con­ tinuous and skillful use of other people’s books,” Nichol cautioned that “no one can say with certainty whether or not any one of his western allu­ sions was the result of first-hand experience” ; however, Nichol asserted, “It is common sense to assume that such a trip occurring at the time it did 4 Western American Literature in his life . . . must have made a lasting impression on him, and that when he began to write he had little need to borrow what he already owned in abundance” (613). Melville was no doubt impressed by the prairie environment; never­ theless, the five works he composed after his trip to Illinois and before his reading of The Oregon Trail reflect very few of these impressions. These five novels had essentially marine settings that gave Melville extensive opportunities to develop analogies based on his personal observations. Yet one novel has no prairie references at all, and the other four contain only six allusions altogether.2 Moreover, only two of these references establish a direct relationship between the pelagic environment and the open prairies. Typee contains no prairie imagery at all. In Omoo the author said that a tract of land cleared by potato growers was “as level as a prairie” (202). Three of the six references appear in Mardi. One of these likens a capsized hull to a “stricken buffalo brought low to the plain” (117), and another associates dreams with “the flowery prairies . . . prairies like rounded eternities” (366). The third introduces a brief discussion of some of the multitudinous pelagic life forms: “It’s famous botanizing, they say, in Arkansas’s boundless prairies; I commend the student of ichthyology to an open boat and the ocean moors of the Pacific” (39). Of a midnight watch spent discussing books with a friend, the narrator of White Jacket said, “That night we scoured all the prairies of reading” (63). In Redburn the advance of a tornado is compared to “a troup of wild horses before the flaming rush of a burning prairie” (102). Only the single reference in Redburn and the third one cited from Mardi directly relate the open sea with the prairies. Note, moreover, that two of the allusions (to buffalo and to the Arkansas prairies) are definitely not based on the author’s first-hand observations. Doubtless Melville’s earlier trip to Illinois did make “a lasting impression on him,” as Nichol asserted; however, given the relative absence of...