When Herman Melville began writing Moby-Dick, he felt constrained by his financial obligations. In a letter to his close friend and fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville proclaims that “dollars curse me” and clarifies: “What I feel most moved to write, is forbidden, will not pay. Yet overall, I can't write the other way. So the product is a final mess and all my books are messes” (“To Nathaniel” 539). Unfortunately, Melville found himself subject to the fundamental economic forces of supply and demand. Melville feared that the novels he couldn't help but write would not be met by consumer demand, thus preventing him from making a profit. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As Melville expected, his final product was not widely purchased, and Moby-Dick was not thoroughly studied until critics "[ignored] biographical evidence as irrelevant to criticism, and made a point of seeing any poem or novel as a perfect work of art, not as a mess” (Parker 714) The new criticism isolated the text for meaning and critics began to compare Melville to famous authors such as William Shakespeare. it does not need to be ignored for Moby-Dick to exist as a literary classic. In fact, understanding significant biographical information provides a new way of understanding the in-depth function of economics in his famous work , Melville has unintentionally created a work that deftly portrays the complex principles of microeconomics, including supply and demand, high risk and high cost, and what economists call “positive externalities,” while emphasizing the more elusive behavioral economics. which affect the individual cost-benefit analysis. Specifically, a comparison between Melville's economics of authorship and the economics of whaling reveals that Moby-Dick exists as a literary representation of the individual's relationship to an economic system. Although Melville had written a few successful novels before attempting Moby-Dick, they were not popular enough to keep him from going into debt after purchasing a farm near his late uncle's property. In Hershel Parker's "Damned by Dollar: Moby-Dick and the Price of Genius," Parker reveals that Melville approached his publisher, Harper & Brothers, for an advance on his manuscript to finance his farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the publishing house rejected Melville's request: "On April 30, the Harpers sent their refusal, citing their 'extreme and expensive expansion' at their plant and pointing out that Melville already owed them 'nearly seven hundred dollars.'" (Parker 717-718). According to Harper, demand for Melville's manuscript was not high enough to command a price that would justify an advance, and so publishers would not pay for Melville's first copy or supply. Although Melville is now recognized as an incredibly skilled writer, at the time his early works did not generate enough income to offset the costs of their publication. This personal familiarity with supply and demand allowed Melville to accurately portray Ishmael's relationship with the supply and demand of whaling labor. In many ways, the indebted Melville is very similar to Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick: Melville had a desire to write a manuscript about a whaling voyage, and Ishmael has a desire to join a whaling voyage. whales. Ishmael admits he can'tgo to sea as a passenger, because "as a passenger you must necessarily have a bag, and a bag is nothing but a rag unless you have something in it" (Melville, Moby-Dick 20). Ishmael does not have to face the impending and financially crippling loans that Melville faced from his father-in-law Lemuel Shaw and his friend T.D. Stewart. The narrative suggests, however, that, like Melville, Ishmael struggled with finances that shaped his career path. As a result, Ishmael has chosen to go to sea “like a simple sailor” and understands that he will be subject to a hierarchical authority that “will order me about some, and make me leap from pole to pole like a grasshopper” (20 ). Ishmael recognizes that he lacks the human capital, or skill, needed to fill the more lucrative position of Captain or harpooner. Melville did not expect the publishers to deny his request for money, but Ishmael seems to fully understand his position in the market for whaling talent; Melville understood his relationship with supply and demand only after Harper rejected his appeal. Ishmael provides the Pequod with his skills and joins the whaling ship as a rower. The Pequod has a demand, or need, for labor, and Peleg hires Ishmael on a “'three hundredth lay'” (76). Melville may not have intentionally created a correlation between himself and his publishers and Ishmael and Captain Peleg, but the similarities suggest that Melville innately recognized that all men are subject to the economic forces of supply and demand. Melville's financial relationship with his publishers sharpened his understanding of the individual's relationship to the supply and demand of authorship, but his voyage on the whaling ship Acushnet gave him economic experience for the entire whaling market. whales. In “Blubber Capitalism,” Laura Saunders explains that sperm whale oil drove the economic activity of nineteenth-century America. He states, “Consumer demand has resulted in the most dangerous big game hunting ever seen” (96). This was especially true of Melville. In Tyrus Hillway's biography of Herman Melville, Hillway admits that Melville was burdened by family debt and, as a result, "was at last driven to make one of those crucial decisions which shape the destinies of men" (35). On January 3, 1841, Melville left New Bedford Harbor and boarded the Acushnet for his eleven-month whaling voyage. The author of Moby-Dick took advantage of the economic need of the whalers. In fact, demand for whale oil was so high that port cities like New Bedford, Massachusetts became “home to perhaps the greatest concentration of wealth in America” (Saunders 96). Melville's novel directly illustrates this accumulation of wealth when Ishmael travels to Nantucket and passes through New Bedford. The narrator notes that the city's thriving economy is based on whaling and proclaims, “Yes; all these brave houses and flower gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. All of them were harpooned and dragged down here from the bottom of the sea” (Melville, Moby-Dick 42). Melville's voyage confirmed his recognition of the importance of whaling to the American economy. In turn, he is able to portray a literary example of free-market capitalism that pushed individuals to participate in three- or four-year expeditions to produce a supply of oil that met growing demand among domestic and global consumers. high risks and costs, the economic and literary relationship between authorship and whaling, although involuntary, becomes more defined. Melville not only drew from his years spent on the Acushnet, Lucy Ann, Charles and Henry, buthe also spent much of his earnings on books about whaling. Parker explains, “He began buying the books he needed if he wanted to write books, eating up his profits early” (714). For Melville, writing involved high costs, because he had to spend a considerable amount of money purchasing books before he could even write Moby-Dick. Additionally, writing comes with high risks because there is no guarantee that a new book will be successful, so authors rely on publishers to fund and promote their books. Although the correlation is unconscious, the inevitable economic liabilities that Melville faced while writing his novel mimic the greater economic risks and costs that affected the entire whaling industry. Saunders makes this point clear: “Whaling was capital-intensive and highly risky. It took $20,000 to $30,000 to start a business, at a time when the average farm was worth $2,500” (97). In Melville's novel, Ishmael reveals that the whaling industry dealt with high capital investments and high risks in a similar way. When Ishmael meets Bildad, the financier explains that he is the captain of “a ship in which a few thousand of his hard-earned dollars have been invested” (Melville, Moby-Dick 95). In essence, whaling relied on investors as authors relied on publishers. Both Melville's financial relationship with his publishers and Ishmael's financial relationship with Bildad imply that individual economic activity often depends on outside investment. More important than simply having high risks and costs, however, authorship and whaling share a similarity in how costs are shifted from publishers to authors and from traders to crew members, respectively. By 1853, Melville became very familiar with publishers deferring costs. Parker recounts: "Much of Harper's stock of books and printed papers was destroyed by fire, and the brothers again charged Melville for the costs before giving him the royalties in his books... They made him pay twice their expenses" (721). To compensate for the high costs and risks of authorship, publishers charged authors before paying them royalties on their successful books. Unfortunately, this also meant that authors still had to incur expenses even if their works weren't successful. Likewise, investors spread the high costs and risks of whaling by withholding wages from workers. Saunders explains that instead of earning a wage, the whalers would receive a “'lay,' a share of the net proceeds” (97). In another biography on Herman Melville, Leon Howard reveals that Melville's whaling voyage used the same share of the proceeds, so investors would not have to pay workers for an unsuccessful whaling voyage (42). In turn, Melville uses Ishmael to tell his readers about this unusual payment system. The narrator states, “All sailors, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company” (Melville, Moby-Dick 75). This correlation between the economics of Melville's writings and Ishmael's whaling demonstrates the application of man's function within an economic system. Specifically, the economic dilemma of a single author and publisher can be used to understand the more complex economic functioning of an entire industry. The correlation between fatherhood and whaling extends beyond the technical aspectsof supply and demand and capital-intensive initiatives to highlight the most significant aspects of the concept of positive externalities. While it is unlikely that Melville was aware of the discussions regarding economic externalities, his work ably demonstrates the complex theory. Essentially, positive externalities are unintended benefits that arise from an economic transaction, but are usually recognized by those not involved in the transaction. Although whaling has brought direct benefits to whalers and those who purchase sperm whale oil, there have also been external benefits recognized by the rest of society. For example, Saunders explains that “American whaling captains literally mapped out the Pacific Ocean” (96). Likewise, Ishmael explains that “the whaler was the pioneer in finding the remotest and least known parts of the earth” (Melville, Moby-Dick 99). Whaling, both real and literary, opened the door to cartography, and society benefited from the substantial increase in knowledge of the globe. Furthermore, the focus on economic efficiency made whaling “an almost colorblind outlet, rare at the time” (Saunders 97) Individuals of color directly benefited from a capitalist system that did not discriminate against them based on race, but society as a whole benefited from a system that financially recognized black individuals as equal or superior to whites. While aboard the Acushnet, Melville found himself in “the presence of the usual mixture of free negroes, Portuguese, and northern European strays” (Howard 42). He portrays this common racial integration, an unacknowledged positive externality, in his harpooners Queequeg, a "dark-skinned" cannibal, Tashtego, a "pure Indian," and Dagoo, a "coal-black savage negro" (Melville, Moby-Dick 28, 106). Indeed, Melville highlights the acceptance of nonwhites in free-market whaling when the hesitant Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad change their minds about hiring Queequeg. Peleg shouts: “'Take the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, on one of our boats. Look, Quohog, we'll give you the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given to a harpooner from Nantucket'” (85). While a racist society may not accept non-whites, a system driven by efficiency and profits becomes blind to arbitrary skin differences, and the cannibal Queequeg earns a higher lay than the white Ishmael. In addition to benefiting the buyer and seller of sperm oil, individuals within society benefit from maps that chart the world and greater acceptance of different races. Indeed, Melville's association with whalers suggests that the economic activity of whaling has a short-term positive externality in providing resources for literature. As Ishmael attempts to describe the great sperm whale, he recognizes its limitations and observes, "The only way you can get even a tolerable idea of ​​its living outline, is to go whaling yourself" (Melville, Moby-Dick 218) . If whaling is not possible for an artist, however, Ishmael admits that he or she may simply have a close relationship with a whaler. For example, in describing a painting of a whale by the French artist Ambrose Louis Garneray, Ishmael assumes that the man "was practically conversant with his subject, or marvelously instructed by some expert whaler" (220). Although Melville had personal experience with whaling, he took advantage of the experiences of other whalers on the high seas to compose his novel. In Melville's handwritten notes to "The EssexWrecked by a Whale" by Owen Chase, Melville relates: "I had no opportunity of conversing with Owen (though he was [6] on board our ship for two hours together) nor have I seen him since" (" [Manuscript notes]” 572). Melville, however, had the opportunity to meet Chase's son, and the young man gave Melville a "complete copy... of the Narrative." Chase did not undertake his whaling voyage for the sole purpose of providing background information for Melville's literature; most likely, Chase joined Essex for his own economic interest. Regardless, Melville internalized the benefits of Chase's sea voyages, and the author unintentionally used the positive externalities of whaling to help him create his famous novel. Melville's work most vividly demonstrates the long-term positive externalities of whaling and fatherhood when he contemplates metaphorical representations. of whales. When Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1850, not many people had the opportunity to go on a voyage and see whales in person. Melville's in-depth physical description and vivid depiction of whales transported readers of the time to the Pequod and allowed them to experience a whaling voyage in their own homes. On the other hand, since modern readers are more familiar with the anatomy of a whale, Melville's text has long-term benefits that go beyond simply explaining an unknown animal. Contemporary audiences have seen an image of a whale, or seen a whale on television, and many have even seen a whale in captivity. The familiarity of the mammal allows current readers to look beyond the physical description of the whale and find deeper connections to the metaphors within its text. Most likely, Melville did not foresee every reader's connection to his text, so every metaphor that helps people find new meaning is an unintended benefit, or positive externality, of both whaling and authorship. For example, in describing the sperm whale's tail, Ishmael states: “True strength never compromises beauty or harmony, but often confers them; and in all that is exceedingly beautiful, strength has much to do with magic” (Melville, Moby-Dick 294). It would be more difficult for an individual unfamiliar with the anatomy of a whale's tail to derive significant metaphorical meaning from Melville's literary description. Through Melville's metaphor, however, contemporary readers can make thousands of insightful connections to help them understand complex and intangible ideas. In "Moby-Dick: Work of Art," Walter Bezanson illustrates the infinite possibilities with phrases from Melville's famous work. He states, “Find a key word or metaphor, start picking it like you would a wildflower, and you'll find yourself tearing up the entire forest floor. Rhetoric transforms into symbolism and symbolism into structure; then everything fades away and starts all over again” (Bezanson 656). The whaling industry helped Melville create his literary work, and Melville's novel helped people find personal and relevant meaning in the whale's profound description; both whaling and fatherhood worked together to highlight the microeconomic principles of positive externalities. Melville's work highlights many of the microeconomic principles that economics struggles to explain, but a comparison of authorship and whaling reveals that Melville inherently understood and demonstrated significantly more complex behavioral economics. While microeconomics focuses on efficiency, behavioral economics analyzes thepsychology of an individual's decision making process. Within the decision-making process, men and women conduct a cost-benefit analysis to help them make their choices. People, however, do not always use economic self-interest as the framework for their cost-benefit analysis. For example, when Melville was informed that his late uncle's farm had been sold, a piece of land that is described as Melville's “first love,” “he was filled with a most unreasonable jealousy” (Parker 716). Melville then made an irrational decision; he purchased a smaller farm near his late uncle's property for $6,500. Instead of purchasing a modest home that he could afford, Melville was driven by interests outside of financial stability and purchased the farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. For the author, the personal benefit of owning a farm outweighed the costs of going into serious debt. Melville experienced firsthand the importance of using behavioral economics to study individuals, because he found himself forced to make financial decisions from desires in addition to personal economic interest. Melville uses this intuitive understanding of behavioral economics to portray Ahab as an individual psychologically motivated by ambition. other than economic interest. Ahab's inspiration to hunt down Moby Dick is at odds with the desire of his stakeholders, or investors. When Captain Bildad sees the Pequod in the open sea, he exclaims: “'Be careful in the hunt, comrades. Do not puncture the boats unnecessarily, harpooners; good white cedar board is raised three percent. within the year'” (Melville, Moby-Dick 96). Bildad reveals that investors are focused on their own economic interest and do not want whalers to take unnecessary risks, because this constitutes a financial liability. Similarly, Starbuck uses money to drive his cost-benefit analysis and proclaims, "'I came here to hunt whales, not for my commander's vengeance'" (139). Starbuck simultaneously discovers that his psychology is driven by financial gain and that Ahab's psychology is driven by revenge. Starbuck cites investors' economic self-interest to justify shutting down Project Pequod so the crew can address the sperm oil spill. Ahab's response, however, states that the Captain's desires differ from those who use financial profit for their decision making. Ahab articulates: “'Let the owners stand on the beach of Nantucket and shout louder than the typhoons. What does it matter to Ahab? Owners, owners? You are always chattering to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience'” (362). Ahab intentionally distinguishes himself from the owners, suggesting that he is not driven by personal economic interests. Ahab is motivated, like Melville, by irrational desire. Ahab recognizes that his selfish ambition has distorted his cost-benefit analysis when he confides in Starbuck shortly before hunting Moby Dick. The Captain complains: “'What a foolish, foolish, old fool for forty years, old Ahab was! Why this hunting conflict? why tire and paralyze the rowing arm, and the iron, and the spear? How is Ahab richer and better now?'” (406). Ahab recognizes that he is making a choice that will not bring him any financial benefit, but, nevertheless, he is driven by a passion he cannot control. Melville is unlikely to have studied behavioral economics, but his irrational choice to buy the farm gave him an understanding of the psychology of decision making. In turn, Melville was able to use his own. 2013.