Food in Literature: Dickens v. Melville

The food writing explored in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Herman Melville's Moby Dick both promote their plots by us prominent themes and enhancing character traits of the role and places in which they are served. The heart of thematic and characteristic revelations lies in their juxtapositions. But, where Dickens makes large social criticism, Melville develops the character and his attitudes against societal faults.

The narrator, Ishmael, later describes the whole establishment of Try Buckets inn as the “Fishiest of all fishy places,” and how even the milk had a fishy tinge. Nonetheless, he indulges in the delicious chowder and enjoys the place about which he was first anxious. This contradiction between the dubious and unappealing connotations of “fishy” and one of the most delicious sounding meals in literature and his level of comfort within the place reminds us not to judge outsides harshly. 

However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition..                                                                                                                        (Melville, 79)

This scene comes in hand of Ishmael meeting the heavily tattooed, Polynesian cannibal Queequeg, with whom Ishmael, an educated white sailor, is forced together and to whom he becomes close. The apprehensions around Queequeg are of race and creed, but nonetheless parallel with the trepidations Ishmael has for the name and look of the inn. Through the fishiness (connoting anxiety) is prominent throughout, showing Ishmael’s inability to fully forget his prejudices, he does wade into acclimatization with them.

The Little Library Café post

Dickens uses his juxtapositions in a much more negative way. In a BBC article, Emma Jane Kirby summarizes about Dickens' writings: “Fat adults often starve thin children; characters who share and enjoy lavish feasts are good, characters who make lavish food just for show or who waste food are generally bad.” So it is not hard to see how when a sympathetic, frail young boy like Oliver Twist asks for more food and all the adults react in the most eccentric way of flabbergasted overreaction, we immediately revolt against all adults in the novel. We are meant, then, to criticize those in charge of wealth and see their greed and revolt for the pleads of the weak as completely ridiculous.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

The issues fought in these novels speak to the prevalent sociopolitical issues of the time. For England in 1850s, at least to Dickens, it was the problem of class division and the human rights (ie. the ability to not be starving). For America in the 1850s, to Melville, it is the issue of racial prejudice (ie. thinking of a tattooed Polynesian as lower in human rank is like being apprehensive of an inn by it's smell or name).