Transcending Time and War: Moby Dick and the Literary Canon

I liked Kayla's post about the literary canon and transcendence. I started to comment on it, and my comment got longer and longer, so I figured I would write a post expanding on my thoughts.

I think transcendence is an important theme in literature found in the literary canon. I've also heard that literature that is considered classic usually has universal themes about humanity. On the other hand, there are so many other works of literature that are forgotten that also have the themes of transcendence and philosophies about the human condition. If having these themes was all it took for works to be added to the literary canon, then we could be adding thousands. So there has to be something more to it.

Then I thought that when each work is published, it is evaluated on its own merit, and (at least not to my knowledge) the question of whether it could be part of the literary canon is not asked until years later. So as Kayla mentioned with Moby Dick, popularity was not a factor when the book was published or for some years after, not until World War I as was mentioned in class. In class we also discussed the many reasons for why Moby Dick became popular during the World War I era. Perhaps a reason for its popularity was the type of transcendence in the book.

It's true that Ishmael seems to do a lot of random musings and philosophizing about several aspects of life. These parts in the book also don't always neatly tie together into a unified whole with one large theme. But isn't the act of being able to transcend and ponder several aspects of the human condition a sort of triumph within itself? What I mean is to be able to take yourself out of time, space, your culture, etc. and to be able to evaluate your actions and those of others in a more expansive view is the beginning of the ability to overcome the sorrows, challenges, and horrors of the human condition. Self-awareness and an awareness of the reasons for people's actions can put events into perspective and create understanding and meaning.

I think this transcendence was important during World War I with such great disillusionment and the questioning of why and how did this happen. People needed a way to transcend the horrors of war, and one way to transcend is through great works of art that teach us something about humanity and make sense of the world around us. I think Moby Dick does this. It seems to constantly remind us that humans are small compared to the world around them. The future is unknown. We are compelled by forces that we don't completely understand. We are all lacking in some way, full of our own traditions, prejudices, and contradictions.