Herman Melville. Peculiarities of writing style in his novel Moby Dick Plan: Introduction 3

Education and father's death
Herman Melville's schooling began when he was five and was interrupted at age 12 by the death of his father. Around the time the Melvills moved to a newly built house at 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan in 1824, Herman and his older brother Gansevoort were sent to the New York Male High School.^[16] In 1826, the year that Herman contracted scarlet fever, Allan Melvill described him as "very backwards in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension" at first,^[17][18] but his development increased its pace and Allan was surprised "that Herman proved the best Speaker in the introductory Department".^[17][19] In 1829, both Gansevoort and Herman were transferred to Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, and Herman enrolled in the English Department on September 28.^[17] "Herman I think is making more progress than formerly," Allan wrote in May 1830 to Major Melvill, "and without being a bright Scholar, he maintains a respectable standing, and would proceed further, if he could only be induced to study more—being a most amiable and innocent child, I cannot find it in my heart to coerce him".^[20]
Emotionally unstable and behind on paying the rent for the house on Broadway, Herman's father tried to recover by moving his family to Albany, New York, in 1830 and going into the fur business.^[21] Herman attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, where he took the standard preparatory course, studying reading and spelling; penmanship; arithmetic; English grammar; geography; natural history; universal, Greek, Roman and English history; classical biography; and Jewish antiquities.^[22] In early August 1831, Herman marched in the Albany city government procession of the year's "finest scholars" and was presented with a copy of The London Carcanet, a collection of poems and prose, inscribed to him as "first best in ciphering books".^[23] As Melville scholar Merton Sealts observed,
The ubiquitous classical references in Melville's published writings suggest that his study of ancient history, biography, and literature during his school days left a lasting impression on both his thought and his art, as did his almost encyclopedic knowledge of both the Old and the New Testaments.^[24]
Nonetheless, Melville's time at the Academy was soon interrupted. Parker speculates he left it in October 1831 because "even the tiny tuition fee seemed too much to pay".^[25]
In December, Allan Melvill returned from New York City by steamboat, but he had to travel the last seventy miles in an open carriage for two days and two nights in subfreezing temperatures.^[26] In early January, he began to show "signs of delirium",^[27] and he grew worse until his wife felt that his suffering deprived him of his intellect.^[28] He died on January 28, 1832, two months before reaching fifty.^[29] As Herman was no longer attending school, he likely witnessed these scenes.^[29] Twenty years later he described a similar death in Pierre.^[30]