Fuhrer, Melville Post : The Enchanted Isles

In the enchanted isles, Melville becomes both at once a voyager and travel guide. His pursuit of lands unknown leads him to “the enchanted isles” and thus produces an amicable vehicle to examine the concept of human innocence.

The Nature of America as we so see, is bent on the pursuit of new lands and frontiers. In the enchanted isles Melville reiterates a journey in to magic. This magic however as seen in the descriptions of Melville’s travels is a thing of terrible majesty and beauty but also great darkness. Melville himself has always had a fascination with the beauty of darkness in particular perhaps how it is inclined to effect human nature or as he describes it “the warp and whoop” of human nature. In the chapter of “Two sides of a Tortoise”, Melville compares the outer and under side of the Galapagos tortoise. It’s hard exterior symbolizing perhaps the dual complexities of human nature with its vulnerable underbelly, the side we as humans choose to protect.

In the story of the enchanted isles, Melville represents the first island he sees as similar to the end of the world. He compares it to having no life and completely desolate. Yet he chooses to include it in his travel narrative perhaps to influence American innocence. To show there are worlds different from the ones we know and the ones we are terrified of because it symbolizes a world of mystery. Melville contemplates “The invisible world is formed by Love and the invisible spheres by fear.”