Essay Questions

What makes Battle-Pieces such an appropriate title for that collection of Civil War poetry?

Although coherent as a volume dedicated specifically to the years and events covering the Civil War, it is not a coherent collection in terms of approach. The poems were all written from a perspective of recollection and as such there is not the immediacy of the emotional tenor of the moment. Just as a single war is composed of several battles which play out differently according to ever-changing variables, so is Melville’s poetic record of the engagement a series of uniquely individual poems that may not share aspects with any other. “Ball’s Bluff” is a dramatic monologue, for instance. “Aurora Borealis” is, as the title hints, a more figurative and symbolic expression of not a particular battle, but a moment shared across the nation as troops began demobilizing to go home.

What might be the significance of the subtitle “The Berg (A Dream)”

Nothing in the body of the poem directly suggests that what is being described by the narrator is a dream except for the fact that it would have been unlikely almost to the point of impossibility for anyone to witness those events and survive to tell about it. For that matter, the title itself does not directly implicate the subtitle as being part of the narrative; in other words, perhaps the narrator did pull off the miracle and is alive and well to report on what he saw. If this is the correct interpretation, then it changes the very meaning of the subtitle so that it is a modifier not for the events of the poem, but for the berg itself. The iceberg can be interpreted as a metaphor for any overwhelming obstruction that prevents a dream from being fulfilled. Or, to take things even farther along, the iceberg could also be a dream fulfillment itself for one who wishes to prevent others from realizing their own dream.

How is the title character of “The Maldive Shark” similar to the white whale, Moby-Dick, as a symbol of evil?

Moby-Dick is, in the warped mind of Captain Ahab, the very realization of evil. The whale encapsulates everything about evil in the world for the old man whose monomania has become such that he and he alone in the world is capable of catching evil and killing it. As the novel progressed forward and everyone aboard the Pequod is forced to sacrifice themselves for that monomaniacal pursuit except Ishmael, Ahab’s vision becomes true to the point: the whale by its very existence has brought evil upon at least a small portion of the world. By contrast, the narrator of “The Maldive Shark” does not bring his subjective opinion into light and instead merely presents the facts that the shark and the pilot fish must work together and in the working together they become a dyadic perpetrator of evil upon others. The poem is a recreation in miniature and metaphor of the relationship between Ahab and Moby-Dick: it takes two to dance with the devil in the pale moonless depths.