In Melville’s “Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. June [1?] 1851” he states that “What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,--it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other I cannot” (2924). Melville wanted to discuss the problems he saw in American life during the nineteenth century and decided that even though it would not pay he would still write his criticisms. His book, Moby-Dick, covered his criticisms of the largely Christian society he was apart of and because he had those criticisms his book did not sell well and he was largely unknown during his lifetime. Melville tried to bring change and break the perceptions that American’s had, but in giving his views the society around him discarded his masterpiece, Moby-Dick. His failure
