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MELVILLE'S THE CONFIDENCE-MAN « THE MODE OF HIGH PARODY

Ahmad Ramez Kutrieh

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 1973

BOWUHG GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 550844 ABSTRACT Vjo > Available literary terminology has not been adequate to describe or help in understanding Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man« His Masquerade. All of the terms used by scholars have managed to describe one aspect of the book or another and always have been limited by the traditions from which they were borrowed. This study, which examined Mel­ ville’s The Confidence-Mant His Masquerade in order to under stand its total pattern as it forms from within, argues that a new term, "high parody," names and explains the pattern Melville uses to structure his book. An examination of character and characterization showed that Melville is not interested in the psychology or motivation of characters but, rather, that he presents a wide variety of characters who are agents but who cannot be known beyond what their appearances and speech would indicate The study next analyzed the temporal aspect of plot in The Confidence-Man and found that it does not follow any common literary pattern, that it is evocative and depends on the reader’s participation to maintain its unity. The spa­ tial aspect of the plot was found to be presenting a pano­ ramic picture of the America of Melville’s day rather than trying to demonstrate a thesis by the way he arranges his characters. The "rhythm" Melville uses is neither comic nor tragic—as defined by Susanne K. Langer—but rather "parodic." It presents an image of man, bewildered by the universe, neither triumphant nor conquered. The mode of the book is described as "high parody" which is defined as a mode by which the beliefs available to Melville are pre­ sented without being completely adopted or rejected. The attainable philosophies of life are not satisfactory yet there is no new belief to supplement them or replace them, so Melville, uncomfortable in any belief and unable of com­ plete negation, adopts an objective, keen, observing atti­ tude where he is content to mirror the total picture of his age, feeling that if he cannot answer the questions that he sees posed, he can at least pose all of them as accurately and as vividly as possible. Thus, Melville's stance becomes one of commitment to "high parodying" the cosmos. Finally, in addition to the relevant importance of. the biographical information available about Melville during the time he wrote the book, some earlier works of Melville’s were’ discussed in relation to the high parody mode. Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the many people who have made this study feasible. My sincere and deep thanks are extended to the chairman of my doctoral committee, Dr. Ray B. Browne, for his assistance and encouragement through­ out my doctoral program. I have very special appreciation for the help and guidance of Professor J. Robert Bashore. I am most grateful for the faith my wife, Marcia, and my parents put in me. I am also grateful for the hope and more than encouragement several persons gave me, espec­ ially Bob and Ghassan to whom I dedicate this work. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHARACTER AND CHARACTERIZATION ...... 14

TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL ASPECTS OF PLOT ...... 63

RHYTHM AND MODE...... 99

CONCLUSION...... 141

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED ...... 154 I

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

For almost a century, Herman Melville's last literary work as a professional writer did not fare well with the pub­ lic or with the critics. Although his work in general has gone through a revival and many evaluations and réévalua­ tions, until recently little notice has been awarded to his 1857 book, The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade. Nineteenth-century literary commentary on this book continued only up to July 1857, a few months after its pub­ lication. For the remainder of the century The Confidence- Man slipped into oblivion. Of the reviews that appeared, the British ones were somewhat favorable» only two were extremely negative, one expressed some puzzlement, one recoiled at the book’s "Timonism," and three were positive. Of the American comments, three were favorable, while the rest were negative or praised parts but condemned the whole. Some portion of twentieth-century critical reception of the book was not more favorable than that of the previous century. William Ellery Sedgwick, for example, found the book overdone, *over-elaborated» its ingenuity is too potent, so that it has the intellectual feel of a jigsaw o puzzle." Another critic, Newton Arvin, finds a different major problem» incompleteness. Arvin describes the novel 2 as a little more than a tantalizing scenario for a book that never came into being—it is meager and monotonous and con­ sists of a series of conversations rather than action. Another critic who is not satisfied,* Ronald Mason, declares The Confidence-Man an unfinished ruin of an ambitious enter­ prise that does not satisfy the artistic standard of a tradi­ tional critic,A final example is Roy Fuller who, rather astonishingly, in an "Introduction" to a popular edition, describes the book as "neither sensible nor successful. This attitude, however, is not the one that pre­ dominates now. In 1946 Elizabeth S. Foster gave the novel its first major study in the form of a dissertation. Later, in 1954, Foster produced an excellent edition of the book which has yet to be surpassed despite the numerous editions that have appeared since. Foster’s study gave the impetus to critics who began to mention the book with interest and sometimes with excitement. Of these critics, Richard Chase considers The Confidence-Man Melville's second best book. Bruce Franklin goes further than Chase to affirm that more readers are considering The Confidence-Man Melville’s master­ piece and the conclusion and culmination of his work.^

Franklin’s praise does not stop at that, for he asserts that there is nothing in Melville's novel that "is wasted, mis­ placed, or merely decorative."? Despite this enthusiastic study, however--and pos­ sibly because of the diversity of the critical approaches 3 used in pursuing the many problematic aspects of the book— there seems to be no agreement about the basic meaning, structure, or form. There are numerous opinions about Melville’s intent and meaning. Some assume that Melville attacks mankind and the social institutions of the time, condemning and negating J the possibility of good by his affirmation of evil as an operative and controlling power. William Braswell, for example, argues that the novel presents a cynical view for it uncovers the meanness and stupidity of men and supports Hobbes' argument that all human actions are spurred by self- o ish motivations. Somewhat similar is the opinion of Newton Arvin who suggests that Melville's book is "most unbeliev­ ing?" its purpose is the unravelling of a series of national frauds, especially of hypocritical humanism and false Q optimism.7 In contrast, some critics assert that Melville is not cynical in his attitude toward the order and thought of his time, and that his criticism is aimed at correcting man's foibles. For example, Fred E. Brower finds Melville arguing that altruism must recognize the realities of human evil, that there should be a balance between other-worldly love and this-world justice.^0 Elizabeth S. Foster also sees the novel exposing the failure of professed Christians to be what they profess and showing that in this world true 4 charity is helpless while untrue charity works havoc. Yet there are critics who see the book as something other than cynicism and satire. Bruce Franklin, for one, argues for a reading that has Hinduism at its center. He sees the book as a dialectic masquerade of the two opposing forces, Siva and Vishna--hate and love, black and white, annihilation and continuity—which are different facets of the same being. Franklin sees Christ merging into Satan and the world created is one where everything is a fiction. "All men become indistinguishable, all gods become the Confidence-Man, salvation means destruction, and black is only another appearance of white. This vision, at first appearance so destructive, is in reality most creative. To experience and survive it is to be re-created." 1? These sharply-contrasting interpretations of the meaning parallel the differing views as to the structure of the book. Merlin Bowen, for instance, argues that there must be a plan in the novel for he notices that the seem­ ingly unplanned structure Is built up of a prose that is poised, precise, and controlled.Through the same method of analyzing the prose, in this case that of the first chapter, Warner Berthoff notices fifteen paragraphs of which seven consist of one sentence each. Berthoff con­ cludes that "The effect is at once of tightness or involu­ tion and yet of a radical casualness of development—an effect that corresponds to the disjointed coherence of the 5 book as a whole." 14 John G. Cawelti, among other critics, finds two sec­ tions in the book« chapters one to twenty-three have six major disguises of the con man who in each instance swindles some money? the rest of the book has one mask» the cosmo­ politan whose role is reversed for he seeks friendship but is rebuffed by distrust and hostility. Cawelti finds reversal on every level and chapter. He adds that Melville is interested in "Presenting a paradigm of reality as he envisages it and the Confidence-Man, enigmatic, ambiguous . . . is such a paradigm.on the other hand, Watson G. Branch finds four structural parts in the book. The first is a series of six avatars of the con man and their victims. The second is one that involves dialogues between the Cos­ mopolitan and a series of passengers on subjects of confi­ dence, friendship and trust. The third is a framework in which the lamb-like and the crowd begin in the first chapter of the book and the Cosmopolitan and the old man conclude at the end of the book. The interpolated materials, indi­ vidual tales, three chapters on the art of fiction and other sections that seem to have been added later constitute the fourth part. Linking theme and structure, Saada Ishag finds the structure to be representing disorder in the universe. She finds similarities between Melville’s technique and that of drama and especially to that of the theatre of the absurd« 6 satire, parodistic nature, end and beginning at the same point, types of situations that repeat themselves, no plot, no characterization, and no conventional story telling. 17' Considering the novel from the standpoint of ideas, Walter Dubler finds the overall structure of The Confidence- Man consisting of a dialectic or rather two-thirds of one since there is no synthesis for the thesis and antithesis provided. 18 The Confidence-Man is described by Edward H. Rosen- berry as having a fairy-tale structure in which an adult’s point of view is concealed under a child’s narrative.^ Rosenberry, who later describes the novel as a "philosophical leg-pull,” is not alone in considering “the comic-spirit" to be the dominant factor in structuring the novel. For so does Elizabeth S. Foster who mentions that the "nothing too much" of the comic spirit is the dominating principle. 20 She finds the surface story constructed of aimless strings of episodes, lacking tension and repetitions, while the dialectical struc- ture “is submerged with the allegory." 21 Finally, Edward Mitchell sees the structure made up of repetitive activity rather than of constancy of character. 22 Critics* opinions of the type of the book are also diversified. Shroeder affirms that it belongs to the class of allegorical visions of Hawthorne’s and Bunyan’s. So does Hershel Parker and Bruce Franklin who describe it as "a full-fledged allegory." Yet Franklin adds that in a 7 sense it is "a grand reductio ad absurdum of the novel form itself. "23 r. v/, B. Lewis calls it a novel with a mask of comedy. Daniel Hoffman finds it to be a journey narrative derived from the picaresque romance. And Irving Howe finds it hardly a novel and not much of an allegory» "It is rather a dialectical Punch-and-Judy show, intended to burlesque American morality,"23 * * * An intelligent discussion about the book cannot pro­ ceed without having a clear answer to the question. Are we to deal with literary figures and their work on their terms or on ours? In dealing with Melville’s The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade, the reader needs to adopt a view of true art that sees it as not being intended to serve primarily as a medium for the advancement of social, political, or philo­ sophical theories. For it is almost a truism to say that a work of art is something that has its own identity, is self- contained, is self-explained, and is the perfect expression of itself. So, when a work refuses to be tamed and fitted into "traditional" literary patterns one must respect the work and search for a new name for it that would describe it and would make the reader more comfortable in dealing with it. The C onf idenc e-Man is a book that has a unique way of speaking—devised to satisfy the demands of its own subject and not to conform to traditional patterns of thought or feelings. The axis of the book is its mode, which does not 8 fit into either the comic mode or tragic mode. A new name, "High Parody," is desirable. "High" is used in a diagramma- tic rather than a valuative way. 26 That is, it serves to distinguish between parody as a controlling rhythm and mode, and parody as a stylistic technique that burlesques or imi­ tates another serious work. High parody is a mode by which beliefs available to the author are represented without being completely adopted or refused. The available nine­ teenth-century views of life—whether they are treated by, or belong to, the tragic or comic modes—are not satisfactory to Melville? yet there is no new belief to supplement or replace them. So, Melville, uncomfortable in any belief and unable to completely reject, adopts an objective, keen, observing attitude in which he is content to mirror the total picture of his age, feeling that if he cannot answer the questions he encounters, at least he can pose all of them as accurately and as vividly as possible. There is no absolute frame of reference or a particular scale of value that is imposed on the picture presented.2? If the high parodic mode is closer to one of the two basic modes of literature, it is to the comic for the mere fact that the writer chooses to write at all—in addition to the fact that the writer’s main interest is a humanistic one. However, it is different from the comic mode which presents and celebrates the image of livingness. Yet as with the other two modes, high parody involves not only a 9 vision of life, but also a technique to present this vision. In order to define the mode of high parody, this study moves from the study of character and characterization to the study of temporal and spatial aspects of plot, to the study of the controlling rhythm of the book and its action. 10 FOOTNOTES

^Hugh W. Hetherington, Melville’s Reviewers« British and American 1846-1891 (Chapel Hill, 1961), p. 258. Herman Melville« The Tragedy of Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 19^5), p. 1&7. -^Herman Melville (New York, 1950)» PP. 249-250. 4 The Spirit Above the Dust« A Study of Herman Mel­ ville (London, 1951)» PP« 199-200. %‘he Confidence-Man» His Masquerade (London, 1948), p. xiii. — — ^Franklin, The Confidence-Man« His Masquerade (Indianapolis, 1967), p. xiv. ?Ibid.. p. xvii. o Melville * s Religious Thought (Durham, 1943), p. 115» 9Arvin, p. 247, Along the same line of judgment, Warner Barthoff in "Herman Melville« The Confidence-Man," Landmarks of American Writing. Ed. Henning Cohen (New York, 196977T7 1287 asserts that the book is the most completely nihilistic, morally and metaphysically, of any book written by an American. Similarly, Leon F. Seltzer in "Camus’s Absurd and the World of Melville’s Confidence-Man.** P«M.L.A., 82 (March, 1967), p. 25» concludes that the meaning of the novel seems to be that charity and trust, essential qualities for human companionship, are untenable in this world. ■^"Melville’s The Confidence-Man as a Ship of Philosophers," Southern Humanities Review, 3 (Spring, 1969), p. 164. •^The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade (New York, 1954), p. liii. 1 p Franklin, p. xxvii. Among the other critics who argue that satire is not the main substance of the novel, Saada Ishag sees ambiguity at the center of the novel and so does Malcolm 0. Magaw in "The Confidence-Man and Christian Deity» Melville’s Imagery of Ambiguity," Explorations of Literature, Louisiana State University Studies,"”18 (19657» p. 99. Magaw argues for the ambiguity of appearances as the essential meaning of the novel. A third critic, John G. Cawelti in "Some Notes on the Structure of The Confidence-Man," American Literature. 29 (November, 1957), p. 287, argues 11 that Melville presents man as masked and inconsistent. But if there is any wise statement, it is perceiving that there are at least two sides to everything. ^"Tactics of Indirections in. Melville’s The Confi­ dence-Man, " Studies in the Novel. 1 (Winter, 196977 p. 401» ^The Example of Melville (Princeton, 1962), p. 173. ■^Cawelti, pp. 283-287. ^The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade. Unpublished dissertation. Northwestern University, June 1970» p. 1. 17Ishag, pp. 33-34. 1ft "Theme and Structure in Melville’s The Confldence- Man." American Literature, 33 (November, 196177 p". 30SI Another critic, R. W. B. Lewis in "Afterward" to The Confi­ dence-Man (New York, 1964), pp. 263-265, looks at the struc­ ture of the novel from the same perspective and sees it as a parade of notions and counternotions and a carefully planned prose that modifies, slyly contradicts, and then completely cancels every positive statement that has been made. ^Melville and the Comic Spirit (Cambridge, 1955)» PP. 73-74. 20Foster, p. xvi. 21Ibid.. p. xci. "From Action to Essence» Some Notes on the Struc­ ture of Melville’s The Confidence-Man." American Literature, 40 (March, 1968), p. 36. 23lhe Wake of the Gods» Melville’s Mythology (Stanford, 196377 PP« 152, 153« ^Hoffman, pp. 285-286. 23”The Confidence-Man," Tomorrow. 8 (May, 1949), p. 56. Roy Male calls it an ’’Inside Narrative" ("The Story of the Mysterious Stranger in American Fiction," Criticism, 3 (Fall, 1961), p. 284)j Joel Porte labels it "A literary vaudeville show." Edward H. Rosenberry calls it "A remark­ able leg-pull, not a drama in any sense, but an extended conversation piece (p. 142)." And finally Leon F. Seltzer classifies it as an "anti-novel (p. 22)." ¿°Many critics see parody in one aspect or another of The Confidence-Man. Ray B. Browne finds Black Guinea 12 a parody of God, goodness perverted (Melville * s Drive to Humanism« p. 313). Elizabeth Foster finds the herb doctor parodying a passage of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalon­ ians which had become a motto of New England transcendental­ ism (pp. lx-lxi). Nathalia Wright finds dramatic parody on the New Testament which shifts from the Sermon on the Mount to Paul (p. 102). Joel Porte, on the other hand, finds a black-comic parody of the Melvillian romance theme of natural depravity (The Romance in America» Studies in Gooper, Poe« HawthorneE Melville and James» p. £¿3). Porte asserts that the con man parodies Milton's notion of the ultimate spiritual gain by the fall of man (p. 160). John Seelye finds the parody of the warmth Melville felt for Hawthorne in Charlie Noble's fond regard for Frank Goodman ("Ungraspable Phantom» Reflections of Hawthorne in Pierre and The Confidence-Man," Studies in the Novel, 1 [Winter, 19597, p, 440). And James Guetti finds in the rhetoric of Chapter XIV a parody of the narrator’s hesitancy to present a consistent state. On the other hand, Hoffman finds in the appearance of the mute a parody of Christ's suffering and a parody of Prometheus’ fire-bringing in the con man's extinguishing of the light of the world (Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1965)» P. 283). Edwin Fussell finds a transparent allegorical parody of Melville’s disastrous literary career and its relation to Hawthorne in the China Aster story. He also finds the Indian Hater parodic of the true Christian (Frontier» American Litera­ ture and the American West (Princeton, 19637, pp. 314, 319). Finally Fred E. Brouwer conjectures that the first half of the book is probably an ironic parody of Hobbes* philo­ sophical antagonists. So Melville’s description of Ringman as a man of mourning is an ironic parody on Shaftesbury's sentimental optimism. While the meeting of the man in gray with the charitable lady is a possible parody of Berkeley's relationship with Swift's Vanessa. Again the use of analogy by the man with the brass plate is a clever parody of Paley's ("Melville’s The Confidence-Man as Ship of Philosophers." Southern Humanities Review, 3 (Spring, 1969), pp. 159, 164). Yet all of these critics see parody in the different parts of The Confidence-Man, My thesis argues for "high parody" as a structuring principle by which all the parts are governed. 2?A note on literary definitions is in order. There are several objections to literary definitions (See C. E. Whitmore, "The Validity of Literary Definitions," P.M.L.A., XXXIV (1924), pp. 722-736). Yet it is obvious that they are useful. Professor Whitmore argues that a literary definition is not a scientific attempt at pointing out a rigid uniformity of what is defined nor is it a recipe for 13 writing works by combining the different ingredients. Rather the definition is suggestive and positively not exhaustive. It is useful because it helps us think and talk about the subject it covers while it is not essential to the extent that we cannot do without it. Literary works are too com­ plex to be reduced into formulas, but that should not forbid us from trying to make more accurate statements about them. CHAPTER II

CHARACTER AND CHARACTERIZATION

Aristotle’s claim for the primacy of plot is well known and generally accepted. Yet although Aristotle’s dic­ tum may be true of the "inspiration” of a work of art, the modern reader usually responds to "character" first. Con­ ceivably, this could be a modern attitude generated by a tradition in criticism that approaches the understanding of fiction through the understanding of character, though, of course, there could be other reasons. Whatever its basis, this tendency suggests that a modern study of a work of fic­ tion should start with its characterss yet scholars and critics have not approached The Confidence-Man through the studying of character and characterization. This fact is not totally surprising. After closely examining character and characterization in The Confidence- Man one discovers no characters whom he comes gradually to know, nor does he meet characters whom he has met the likes of in other fiction, nor characters he expected to meet between the covers of a book, nor are the characters in this work of Melville similar to the characters he created in his other works. Here one finds no Toramos, Ishmaels, Ahabs, Starbucks, Pierres, Veres nor Billy Budds. If there is a character who is akin to those of The Confidence-Man, 15 Bartleby must be the one—and even Bartleby is of a differ­ ent cast, though he shares with them the ability to elicit a certain response from readers nowhere else to be found in Melville'8 work. But why students of Melville have never approached the study of The Confidence-Man through character is not totally understandable, for Melville discusses the subject in three chapters of the book, and his discussion represents an accurate picture of the characters of the book. In fact, a close reading of these three chapters shows that Melville is very conscious of his method of depicting characters and a reading of the book in light of Melville's comments will show that his characters are accurate examples of his pro­ nouncements about character. What does Melville say about character? In Chapter Fourteen, Melville remarks that both writers and readers alike look for consistency in the portrayal of characters. Though this seems reasonable, adds Melville, a closer inspec­ tion of fiction shows that fiction that is based on fact—to be true to fact--cannot portray consistent characters. Mel­ ville asserts that real life does not have consistent characters? and that characters in real life are not know­ able because of the contrasts they show* Upon the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, 16 leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.l (p. 77) True to this statement and showing a good appreciation of human nature, Melville presents to us, in a dim light, char­ acters who cannot be known beyond what their appearances show. To delineate more than appearances, Melville says, would be to represent human nature in "transparency," a con­ dition that would make the characters either "very pure or very shallow." (p. 77) Melville disputes--though he facetiously denies the fact that he does—the claim that psychological novelists unravel "the last complications of the spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully made." (p. 78) For is it not obvious, Melville asks, that "If the acutest sage be often at his wits’ ends to under­ stand living character, shall those who are not sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit along a page, like shadows along a wall?" Considering also the fact that nature produces an abundance of inconsistent characters that no writer ever produced, it is obvious, Melville concludes, that one cannot depend on experience in every case in understanding character for "no one man can be coextensive with what is." (p. 77) Again Melville is true to his statements for he does not deal with the psy­ chology of his characters. Nor does he explain and make clear their motives. Psychology and motivation remain two qualities to be guessed at by the reader. But this attitude 17 taken by Melville does not mean that he completely despairs of ever knowing the totality of Mani later in the chapter— though half-mockingly, half-desperately-hopeful—he says that serious psychologists may be able some day, somehow to find "some mode of infallibly discovering the heart of man." (p. 79) In Chapter Thirty-three, Melville pointedly declares that the characters of fiction should be "like the people in a play, must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act as nobody exactly acts. It is with fic­ tion as with religion« it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie." (p. 207) And Melville follows his dictum and presents characters whom we feel the tie to not because they look, act and talk the way we or the people we know look, act and talk» rather, the reader feels that-given the situation the characters are in, the roles they play and their attitudes—they hint at truths the reader feels but cannot fathom, and realities one experiences but cannot understand. In Chapter Forty-four, Melville discusses the advis­ ability of labeling characters "original." He stresses that there are not many characters who deserve the name—like "Don Quixote," "Hamlet" and Milton's "Satan" do. He points out that an original character in fiction is "as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder of a new 18 religion." (p. 271) Melville goes even further in making original characters a special breed by likening the "original" character to "a revolving Drummond light, raying away from itself all around it—everything is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet), so that, in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that which in Genesis attends upon the beginning of things." (p. 271) In this fashion of defining original characters Melville professes his inability to present an original character who would shed light on everything that surrounds him to make all issues clear and defined through the values and standards he establishes, Melville adds that there are singular, odd, striking, entertaining, eccentric and instruc­ tive characters and a good fiction could be full of them. But to have one original character, Melville says, one must be extremely lucky. So Melville argues that characters cannot be con­ sistent and thus clear and defined, nor can their motives and psychology be known, nor do they look like people in real life, nor can they be original. But what kind of characters can Melville present after all these restrictions? In fact, do not his restrictions preclude the creation of any character? 2 The answer to the second question is, of course, negative. Melville did create more than thirty characters in the same book and most, if not all, of them 19 follow his prescriptions. To answer the first question, a discussion of all the characters is necessary. Melville presents a large variety of characters which is almost inclusive of all kinds. The variety is one essential part of the picture he presents and he says as much when he gives a general picture of the characters he assembles aboard the Fidele. There was no lack of variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners? men of business and men of pleasure? parlor men and backwoodsmen? farm-hunters and fame- hunters? heiresshunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and raoccasined squaws? Northern speculators and Eastern philosophers? English, Irish, German, Scotch, Danes? Santa Fe traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in cravats of cloth of gold? fine-looking Kentucky boat-men, and J'apsnese- looking Mississippi cotton-planters? Quakers in full drab, and United States soldiers in full regimentals? slaves, black, mulatto, quadroon? modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews? Mormons and Papists? Dives and Lazarus? jesters and mourners, tee­ totalers and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs? hard-shell Baptists and clay-eaters? grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests. In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man. As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, basswood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these varieties of mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like pie- turesquesness? a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance„ Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the Mississippi itself, which, unit­ ing the streams of the most distant, and opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan and confident tide. (p. 8) And Melville does not stop at this description of the pas­ sengers to indicate their variety. Among them are repre­ sentatives of diverse occupations, of different age groups. 20 from different parts of the country, and from different races. When any one of these characters is in the foreground, he is not there by himself nor is he among a crowd of char­ acters. We see most of the characters in groups of two and have a chance to see them interacting two after two. They do not stay in the foreground for long—with the excep­ tion of two or three--and when they depart they usually do not appear again. Some give themselves names and some do not. The names and tags assigned to characters in The Confidenc e-Man serve as partial indicators of the kind of personality each manifests. These tags are partial because they point only to identifiable qualities in the surface actions, moods and appearance of the characters. These qualities are familiar ones to any person? a reader probably uses such tags to identify people around him, people he knows and people he does not know. Thus the epithets serve to make the characters seem to be within the range of knowledge of the reader. This is an important aspect of characterization in The Confidence-Man. More than half of the characters in The Confidence- Man do not have names but are referred to by epithets, or with meaningful phrases or simply by use of the word “other" to distinguish speakers from each other. In a fairly size­ able portion of the book even use of the word "other" is 21 absent and the speeches of the characters are put in sequence with no other indication of who is talking. Even when a character has a name, the narrator does not always refer to the character by name. Consequently, in the imagination of the reader# the characters remain forever labeled and fixed in a specific manner designed by the author. "The wooden­ legged man" can be referred to in no other way. The des­ criptive labels serve to typify the characters rather than to provide handles to make it easy to talk about them. In real life names have only that significance and usually have nothing to do with a person's individual characteris- . tics. But in fiction, names are usually important to signify some of the attributes of the characters. In one sense the characters we meet in the book are types. The names that we encounter have some allegorical value but they are not allegorical. Y/e know only the second name of the merchant Mr, Roberts# which sounds like a "typical" name for a merchant. The narrator refers to Mr, Roberts only as "the merchant." The barber's name is# appropri­ ately# William Cream yet the narrator refers to him as "the barber." But the other names’ appropriateness are not as obvious. "Black Guinea" seems to indicate the color of the character’s skin but "Guinea" becomes equivo­ cal in its meaning when combined with "Black"—bad money? "John Ringman" seems an innocent enough name, yet it has some negative connotations that remain vague and uncertain. 22 One wonders if the character is one of a band of conspira­ tors who operate on the boat and hence the name, Ringman. Of course there are other meanings for "Ring" that are pos­ sible. Yet the narrator refers to Ringman only as "the man with the weed," after a weed in the character's hat that signifies his mourning. "John Truman" is obviously meant to inspire trust in the character. Yet the character has "shady” qualities that would make the fitness of the name a matter of doubt? is it meant to be ironic? Of course one has to remember that neither the character nor the narrator uses the name, but another character later in the book refers to "Truman" by this name. The narrator, on the other hand, refers to Truman only as the "man with a book," refer­ ring to the transfer book, ledger-like, that Truman carries with him wherever he goes. "Thomas Fry" is again another innocuous name, but not so the character who bears it. When the reader meets Fry he is forced to speculate on whether "Fry" has some ironic implications in it. The nar­ rator refers to Fry as "soldier of fortune" because he is dressed as a soldier. "Pitch," as a name of a backwoodsman, is not explained as either a first or a last name or a nickname. The black and dark implications of the word could be taken as possibly signifying the "misanthropic" attitude of the character. But there are more sides to the character than the "misanthropic" one, and the name seems to acquire 23 different connotations. Pitch is referred to by the narrator as the "bachelor," the "backwoodsman" and the "misanthrope," labels more descriptive than "Pitch" in denoting his major characteristics. The words "Charles Arnold Noble" sound as if they belong to a titled English gentleman. They suggest honor, esteem, loftiness and excellence. But his personality fails to suggest any of these qualities and, in fact, it suggests many of the opposite qualities. The narrator refers to Noble with only one tag, "the stranger." The same term is used to refer to "Mark Winsome" and other characters. But Winsome has another designation, to his credit, "the mystic." "Winsome" tries consciously to be deserving of his name but remains unsuccessful. "Egbert," the disciple of Winsome, has only this name. Whether Melville meant "Egbert" to have any connotation of intellectual bombasity or not is left to the individual reader to decide. The narrator calls him "the disciple," a follower of someone else’s ideas. "Frank Goodman" has more than one meaning in it. It attests to the openness of the character and It says some­ thing about his morality. Goodman stays in the foreground more than any other character. His personality is defined and redefined through his contacts with eight characters. The complexity of his traits induces the narrator’s label, "the cosmopolitan," which is more fitting and descriptive. The reader is left to decide for himself whether the name’s 24 implications are "straight” or ironic. The rest of the characters are not given names, only epithets that describe the appearance or the profession of each. The first character to appear in the book is des­ cribed as "lamb-like" and "mute." "Mute" is an accurate description of the character while "lamb-like" has a posi­ tive connotation that is valuative and urges the reader to like the character. However, the circumstances of the appearance of the "mute" qualify the positive attitude sug­ gested by "lamb-like." One of the characters is a student conjectured to be a "sophomore," a word both as reference and as a type. There are two clergymen among the characters, an Episcopalian and a Methodist. Both are referred to with different labels than their sects. There is a character who is described as a "miser," a label that sticks with him in his three appearances. Another has a wooden-leg and this fact serves to distinguish him from other characters. Another character is wearing "a gray coat and a white tie" and again this detail serves as his badge. One character's emblem is his "gold sleeve buttons," while that of another is the "brass plate" around his neck. One character is identified by his "auburn-hair" and another by his "hook­ nose." There are other names in The Confidence-Man which belong to "twice-removed-fictional" characters within the fiction. These names follow the same pattern as the Z5 preceding ones. There is "James Hall," a name of a judge who tells a story of a backwoodsman? "Colonel John Moredock" which is a real name. But Moredock is labeled as "Indian- hater," a label that hints at his inmost reality. Yet, even this fictionally and morally clear label is befogged by a discussion of the metaphysics of Indian-hating. Another twice-removed-fictional character is "Goneril." The name immediately brings the unsavory association with King Lear's monstrous daughter, in addition to its sugges­ tion of a venereal disease. This name seems to be the only one that has a clear moral condemnation in it. Yet even this name has to be read in.the light of the tall-tale tradition in which it is used, thus reducing its effects. One other tale has the name "Charlemont." It does serve to indicate the character’s French ancestry and hints at his nobility, though where this nobility lies is not told by the name or made clear by the tale. Finally there are a few names, belonging to the allegorical tradition, that are embodied in the tale of China Aster» "China Aster," "Orchis," "Old Plain Talk," "Old Prudence" and "Old Honesty," Yet the meaning of this allegory is muddled, for its teller twists it to get the suitable meaning for his end. The characters presented in the book have familiar aspects and the reader tends to accept them. But the reader’s familiarity is limited only to the time he sees 26 the characters in action and does not develop to a fuller knowledge. A reader finds that he meets characters who are somewhat familiar but who, in their actions, have variations on the familiar pattern he expects them to follow and are consequently unfamiliar or unknowable. And the combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity produces in the reader the need for questioning the familiar and familiarizing the unfamiliar until he reaches the point where he cannot deter­ mine with any degree of certainty whether he knows the char­ acters and what they stand for or not. The characters, as will emerge from the following study, are realistic though they are not knowable. In fact, because Melville wants them to be realistic, they are unknowable. Generally, they are not extensively treated and even when one is, the reader still does not know him any better than he knows the rest. The cosmopolitan is a perfect example of this. The reader does not know the real motions or the psychology behind the actions of the charac­ ters. The physical descriptions of the characters are, for the most part, elaborate and seem to be emblematic of the real qualities and ideas the characters hold as well as their essences. But the appearance is not always supported by action. These ideas are better seen in the following discussion of the major characters of Melville's book.

Most of the studies of The Confidence-Man specify a 27 varying number of characters and classify them as either con men or avatars of the con-man. The number of the so-called "con-men" varies from six to eight. One study left the impression that Melville may have intended many more than eight characters to be counted as "con-men." These eight include the "lamb-like," "Black Guinea," "the man with a weed," "the man in a gray coat and a white tie,” "the man with a book," "the herb-doctor," "the Philosophical Intelli­ gence Office representative" and the "cosmopolitan." "Pitch is praised by almost all the critics as the one character who is able to resist The Confidence-Man. "Thomas Fry,” "Charles Arnold Noble,” "Mark Winsome" and "Egbert" are usually discussed as con-men of a different sort and are treated extensively also. By necessity a discussion of most of these characters is essential to show that the principles of characterization that Melville put in his three chapters about fiction are followed throughout his book, without exception. No other character raises more controversy than "the mute." Is he a con-man or is he a savior? Students of The Confidence-Man who read him one way or the other are totally convinced that their readings are accurate. And the facts seem to support both factions.^ When "the mute" enters the scene of The Confidenoe-Man. he is dressed in cream colors. He is mute, deaf and "lamb-like." he is described in rather positive terms* "His cheek was fair, 28 his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap." (p. 61) He comes alone carrying no baggage, and the people on the steamer, the narrator tells us, look at him in such a way that he must be "a stranger." His coming to the steamer is likened to the sudden coming of the god Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca. The word "advent" is used to describe his coming, a word associated with the coming of the Savior of humanity. He has an air of one who is performing his duty but has no badge of authority. He has "an aspect so singularly innocent." (p. 62) The crowd sees in this innocence an aspect that is not fitting to the time and place and so the mute is looked at as an intruder and a simpleton. The "lamb-like" stops at a poster warning of the arrival from the East of an imposter who is mysteri­ ous though his description is given in detail. Here he starts writing verses, from I Corinthians, that urge Charity. The crowd rejects the lamb-like man's motto twice but does not reject the contrasting motto of the barber that urges distrust. The mute retires from the crowd to an unfre­ quented place near the foot of a ladder that leads to the upper deck. The narrator suggests that it seems that the mute is aware of his place and that it is probable that his destination is a small town only a few hours hence. The mute under the ladder reminds one of the passengers of Jacob dreaming at Luz and this suggests Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven. One passenger thinks of the mute as 29 a Casper Hauser—whose past, identity or psychology no one is familiar with. Other passengers have different opinions, suggested by ranging descriptions of the mute as, "Odd fish," "escaped convict, worn out with dodging," to "Singular inno­ cence," and "Uncommon countenance." The probable destina­ tion of the mute is never verified, and the reader can only speculate whether the mute left the boat or not. The narra­ tor suggests that the mute "... not unlikely, waked up and landed . . . , " Of course, the narrator tells us that the mute looks gentle and "jaded," is tired and dreamy, and so goes to sleep before the boat departs. Sleep steals over the mute "as sugar-snow in March" steals down on farmers—with "white placidity." This description of the mute leaves the reader with a positive attitude that counters the suspicious atti­ tude created by the appearance of the mute’s suit which is linty, giving the impression of someone who had traveled long and hard. This last impression, coupled with the warning about the mysterious imposter coming from the East, leaves the reader wondering whether the mute is the imposter— or a savior preaching the gospel of charity and asking for nothing in return. The facts support both suppositions and, in doing so, support neither. Even when one advances the argument that the muté advocates charity and thus he is a prophet of Christianity, the facts presented by the narrator show that while the doctrine of "Charity thinketh no evil" 30 is advocated, pickpockets and other knaves are wandering among the crowd. The narrator increases the suspicion by remarking that "in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes increase." (p. 2) While whiteness is a major aspect of the mute, dark­ ness is one of the major aspects of Black Guinea. He shares with the mute the fact that they both encounter a crowd of passengers in contrast to the two-characters-at-a-time pattern that is followed in the book. Black Guinea's strange looks are heightened by his grotesque and crippled figure, his tow-cloth attire, his coal-sifter tambourine and his knotted black fleece hair. The narrator describes him as being "goodnatured," and his face as an "honest black face." Black Guinea shuffles about among the crowd, making music and making everyone smile. The narrator remarks that the negro's deformity and misfortune that reduced him to the stature of a Newfoundland dog, raises smiles in people who have everything the negro lacks and yet lack his cheeri­ ness. But the narrator adds that, wandering among the pas­ sengers, the negro looks like a black sheep among the white flook. Thus Black Guinea's looks are not adequate to identify his essence though scholars have taken one or another of his aspects and judged him by it. But the evidence of his looks lends itself to many ways of interpretation. The reader must go to Guinea's action to see if he can find something 31 that would fix his reality. A cattle dealer talks with Guinea and we come to know that the negro is not a slave, that he sleeps in St. Louis in the streets he calls the oven of a baker, the sun, and that he is travelling to visit a brother of his down the river. Next, the passengers who thought of him as a "curious object" are tempted in a singu­ lar manner by Guinea towards diversion and charity. The negro, being on all fours like a canine, is treated like a dog in a "pitch-penny game," a "game of charity" where he receives the alms of the crowd through his mouth. The narra tor resents something about the diverting game of charity. But whether his resentment is due to the negro, the crowd, or charity in this manner, is not quite clear. The narrator remarks "To be the subject of alms-giving is trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under the trial, must be still more so? but whatever his secret emo­ tions, he swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this side the aesphagus." (p. 10) But the narrator does not stop there in making the negro's character subject to the reader's trust and distrust For here he introduces "a limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person" who calls the negro's deformity a sham put on for financial reasons. The reader who did not suspect Guinea before now has some reason to. But this character who has a wooden leg is made to appear suspicious himself. The narrator speculates that the gimlet-eyed character is 32 possibly a discharged custom-house officer who is avenging himself by either "hating or suspecting everything and every­ body." (p. 11) However, the insistance of the gimlet-eyed character that Black Guinea is a white operator spreads the suspicion among the crowd, and among the readers in turn. Though suspicious, the crowd forces the wooden-legged man to retire, only to start questioning the negro themselves and to ask if he has any friends who could testify for him. Black Guinea mentions several of the characters we meet later in the book and insists that they would attest to his honesty.**' A Methodist minister suggests that the negro

"looks honest," to which the wooden-legged man who has returned snaps "perversely," that looks are not the same as facts. The Methodist asks the suspicious man to stop throw­ ing doubts as a Canada thistle, and he urges charity. The narrator says that the gimlet-eyed character "diabolically" says that charity belongs to heaven while "here on earth, true charity dotes and false charity plots. Who betrays a fool with a kiss, the charitable fool has the charity to believe is in love with him, and the charitable knave on the stand gives charitable testimony for his comrade in the box." (p. 14) The crowd is more suspicious and a few pas­ sengers think that Black Guinea is a Jeremy Diddler. The negro again asks for confidence, now from an unresponsive crowd except for a country merchant who in the act of giving half a dollar drops his business card. Guinea puts his 33 leather foot on the card. The negro wonders where his friend with the weed is and leaves, probably to buy a ticket, the narrator suggests. Although this is the last we see of the negro, it is not the last we hear about him. The man with a weed testi­ fies to the merchant that Black Guinea is a trustworthy character. And so testifies the man in a gray coat to the clergyman? he adds that Guinea’s afflictions are true. The herb-doctor says that he examined Guinea and prescribed medicine to him. The man with a book later denies that he knows the negro (although the negro lists a man with a book as one of his acquaintances) and suggests that the hardships of Black Guinea are in the pity of the observer rather than Black Guinea himself. The wooden-legged man is seen again and he suggests that Black Guinea’s sham is not assumed for the money? rather, like the devil who gulled Eve, his object is something besides money. The concrete and factual appearance of Black Guinea is made subject to suspicion. In addition, the issue of trust and suspicion is raised from the concrete to the abstract level through a discussion of the personality of Black Guinea. The reader is left with both a suspicious attitude towards a person who seems to be deserving charity, and with a question in his mind whether man should be trust­ ing or suspicious as a matter of principle. Even if a reader did not have that suspicion in the beginning of the 34 scene, the discussion among the crowd surrounding Black Guinea would put forth the issue in his mind. The man with a weed in his hat (of whom Black Guinea moaned the absence) appears on stage next? he meets the mer­ chant who lost his business card earlier. The man with a weed casts a dark shadow on his own personality when he men­ tions the business card of the merchant while trying to con­ vince the merchant that they knew each other a long time ago. He says that he knows Black Guinea and that Black Guinea is an honest man. He adds that he has already satisfied the curiosity of the crowd as far as the negro is concerned. He makes this last point as a springboard to ask if one should not necessarily have confidence and trust in the moral stance of a person who is made a reference by another man? Of course all this is said to induce confidence in the man with a weed though it works to suggest distrust in him. The distrust is increased when he dodges a concrete remark of the merchant and answers it by a philosophical one whose relation to the subject is tenuous. He thus shows that he is, either "a great sage or a great simpleton" as the narrator suggests, or a con-man as many students of The Confidence-Man assert. Further action of the man of the weed is also suggestive of more than one interpretation. He tells the merchant a story of their earlier meeting and suggests that a fall may have impaired Roberts' memory. Here the merchant admits that he had brain fever years ago 25 and had lost part of his memory because of it. This fact, coupled with the admission of the merchant that he is a mason (when the man with a weed proposes that he is) sug­ gests that the two men knew each other before. This knowledge argues for the innocence of the man with a weed from the charge that he is a con-man. The man with a weed asks the merchant for money, from one brother to another, and obtains it after telling the story of his misery. The whole scene is presented as a parody of sentimental stories and their style. (The man with a weed says he is alone, has not seen a familiar face in a long time, his necessity is greatly demanding, the face of the merchant is the first friendly face he encounters, etc.) Yet, especially through the use of "the stranger" in referring to the man with a weed, the narrator tries to remain neutral to this character, evoking neither positive nor negative reactions. The man with a weed takes the money and leaves after alerting the merchant to the possibility of making a profit by buying shares from the representative of the Black Rapids Coal Company. The man with a weed in his hat is described only in the scantiest manner» "a man in mourning clean and respect­ able, but none of the glossiest." (p. 19) He is seen next leaning at the boat’s side, melancholic and murmuring to himself. He is meditating over the kindness he received. At this point the narrator interrupts with an equivocal 36 passage which discusses the plentifulness of gratitude and modesty though they are left unrecognized. The man with a weed next talks to a "student" about how reading Tacitus drives a person into cynicism. He invites the "student" to adopt his view that even though sorrows in the world are great, yet wickedness is small. He adds that he believes that there is "much cause to pity man# little to distrust him." (p. 28) He asks the "student" to read Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination (Akenside, a disciple of Shaftesbury, argues that whatever is is right) and says that one should read only books that inspire love and trust. (His speech attacking Tacitus and asking for trust is parodic of the learned style of pedantic persons.) When he asks the "student" if he would have confidence in him, the student leaves. So does he, not to be seen again. Later the "student" refers to him as a saddish, a little cracked in the head. On the other hand, the merchant refers to him as the unfortunate man John Ringman, who told the merchant a story, confirmed and detailed later by a man in a gray coat and a white tie. The story involves the per­ secution of Ringman by Goneril, a jealous wife with an evil touch. Ringman tolerated her, says the narrator, because of Christian Charity, though she tried to pronounce him insane. Ringman ran away but after a few years heard she had died? this was his reason for wearing the weed in his hat. All this serves to make the man with a weed a complex, 37 though not a round, character. One can conclude that the characterization of the man with a weed is done in such a way as to allow for no one consistent explanation of him. Though the problem of understanding this character is the same as that with Black Guinea, it is more complicated and the different arguments have to deal with more supporting and negating evidence. The man in gray coat and white tie is another char­ acter who is assigned a con-man role by many of the students of The Confidence-Man. He meets more characters and dis­ cusses more issues than the previous characters. As far as his appearance is concerned, the narrator's suggestion of a connection between this character and the previous ones is more tantalizing. "Upon a cursory view, this last person might have seemed, like the man with the weed, one of the less unrefined children of misfortune? but, on a closer observation, his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though much of sanctity." (0. 31) He is collecting contri­ butions to the Seminole Widow and Orphan Asylum. Charity, directed towards the individual in the cases of the negro and the man with a weed, is with this character organized and directed towards a group. The man in a gray coat meets one wealthy gentleman who repulses him and another who insults him by insinuating he is a con-man. The man in gray wishes both some charity. He meets the young clergyman and assures him about Black Guinea. In contrast to these 38 assurances, the wooden-legged man, who appears again, tells a story about how unsuspicious persons are easily duped. He gets money from a man with gold sleeve buttons with whom he discusses his plan for World Charity organized on the prin­ ciple of Wall Street spirit—contracting the conversion of heathens through public bidding! He mentions his protean easy-chair that is supposed to ease the pangs of moral as well as physical pain. The narrator describes the person in gray "as a righteous man," who manages to charm his audi­ tors for "a not unsilvery tongue, too, was his, with gesture that were a Pentecost of added ones." (p. 4?) Next he meets a charitable lady who also puts trust in him and.gives him a contribution. That is the last we see of him. The man in gray coat and white tie, through his silvery tongue and through his actions, draws the reader’s attention to a quality the characters of The Confidence-Man possess. They all seem to be performing to an audience. In retrospect, this trait seems to be true of the mute, the negro and of Ringman. In fact it seems to be true of all the other characters in the entire book, though in some it becomes prominent enough for the reader to think of these characters as actors (Charles Arnold Noble and Egbert). The man with a book, later to be named John Truman by another character, is the president and transfer agent of the Black Rapids Coal Company. He modifies the role of the man in gray for he is a businessman preaching charity 39 rather than a man making charity a business. All one knows about his looks is that he is a "brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap." (p. 51) But the ledger-like book he carries under his arm serves to identify him. He refers to the man with a weed and to the man with a gray coat and these references, among other evidence, imply some link with these others and possibly, as some scholars think, of being an avatar of the same character. Yet there is other evidence to contradict this sup­ position. He talks with the "student" who has heard before of the Black Rapids Coal Company and knows of its problems as well as the opportunities it affords to investors. This suggests that the company is authentic. The man with a book suggests that the problems of the company arise from suspicious and hypocritical people» hence, his cry for confidence and trust. The man with a book offers to sell stocks in the New Jerusalem but the "student" refuses. Then he meets the merchant who happens to see the inscription on the book and asks the man with a book to sell him some stock. While the transaction is being completed, both drink cham­ pagne and discuss the fate of the world and the existence of good and bad in it. The man with a book assures the mer­ chant that since nature has meal and bran, the bran should not be condemned. The narrator interjects an anecdote to caution the reader from hastily judging the man with a book, for up to this point what this character has done is sugar 40 all the facts that would indicate evil. On the other hand, the narrator admits "that the natural heart, in certain points, was not what it might be? men had been authorita­ tively admonished." (p. 73) This interjection focuses the question of confidence on whether one should trust his intuitions or should be reluctant to use them because of the sinfulness of the human heart. The question is more focused because the man with a book, a shady character, urges com­ plete and blind faith in the goodness of the universe. His protestations for trust are exaggerated to unreasonable limits. This is acutely clear when he meets the miser, who was mentioned by the merchant, and convinces him to have blind trust that his money will be tripled through a secret plan. The herb-doctor is described as "a stranger in a snuff-colored surtout, the collar thrown back." (p. 86) He says he knows Black Guinea? he uses one of the mute’s mottoes? he looks for the man in a gray coat? and, finally, he talks about confidence and trust in a similar way to that of the previous characters. All this makes the reader entitled to be suspicious that this character is in com­ plicity with all of the previous characters in "confidence" plots. His strategy is different, however, for he peddles an Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator and a Samaritan Pain Dis- suader, both of which are made of herbs and are "natural." He meets the sick miser and sells him some of his medicine. 41 He also sells to other passengers, but encounters trouble from a "Titan," from an equivocal Mississippi operator, and from Pitch. His personality is as equivocal as the other characters*. To alert the reader, especially one who may be hastily making up his mind about the herb-doctor, to the many facets of the herb-doctor's personality and the many possible points of view he can be regarded from, the narra­ tor introduces a scene between two passengers who discuss the herb-doctor's personality. The herb-doctor preaches salvation by faith and trust, yet he induces distrust. He has also the showman's attitude about him, making his utterances subject to scrutiny to find whether what he says on the surface is analogous to what lies beneath. The evi­ dence is contradictory, encouraging the reader to be sus­ picious of the philosophy the herb-doctor advocates. The man wearing a brass plate proclaiming him an agent of an employment agency, The Philosophical Intelli­ gence Office, says he saw the herb-doctor, "a mild sort of character," leave the boat. This statement and the man with a brass plate's demand for confidence are the only hints about a possible stealthy connection between him and the other characters who talk about confidence. But these hints do not go beyond intimations of something secretive to be wondered about. The man with a brass plate is described as a "chance stranger" and as "a round-baked, baker-kneed man, in a mean five-dollar suit." (p. 129) 42 Unsavory terms usually used in describing dogs are enumerated to illustrate his excessive talk. A great amount of talking is something that characterizes almost all of the characters who talk about confidence and trust. The man with a brass plate argues that he has studied Man scientifically. He claims that man can outgrow his bad qualities and can pro­ gress towards perfection. This character's philosophical arguments are made subject to the scrutiny and suspicion of the reader because of the manner of their presentation. The last character to be discussed as a con-man by students of The Confidence-Man is the cosmopolitan.The Cosmopolitan, later named Francis Goodman, is described in a detailed fashion. He is smoking a long bright cherry- stem, a Nuremburgh pipe with "a porcelain bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked nations— a florid show," (p. 150) The Cosmopolitan shows his all- encompassing personality through his "costume" as well as his pipe. The costume consists of "a vesture barred with various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse? a flowered regatta-shirt? while for the rest, white trousers of ample duck flowed over maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple crowned him off at top .... Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused? all showed signs of easy service." (p. 149) The Cosmopolitan says he thinks of himself as a true citizen of the world and that his principle is to repay good for ill. After talking with Pitch, the Cosmopolitan meets a series of unattractive characters« Noble, Winsome and Egbert. The three pretend that they agree with the spirit of trust the Cosmopolitan professes but they are all at variance with his philosophy. Some scholars have argued that the Cosmo­ politan is uncovered by these characters. Yet, the Cosmo­ politan’s action throughout cannot be characterized as that of a charlatan or that of an honest, loving man, to any degree of certainty. The Cosmopolitan seems to uncover ingeniously the plot of Noble to dupe him, argues with Win­ some in such a way as to show Winsome’s supposed cool and icy character, and finally plays a game with Egbert pur­ portedly to expose his icy, practical inhumanity. But throughout these encounters, the reader discerns complexi­ ties in the Cosmopolitan’s character that would demand a whole chapter to discuss fully. Suffice it to say that the evidence that points to a diabolical character is as strong as the evidence that shows him to be a noble one. Many examples demonstrate this point. The Cosmopolitan is very obviously "unsettled" by Noble’s remarks about Polonius. No diabolical character could be "unsettled" by a common sharper. Nor would such a character disclose Melville’s own estimate of Shakespeare, as the Cosmopolitan does in the same discussion with Noble. Nor would such a character insist that a deity presides over everything in the universe, 44 that living agents must be in some way held accountable to this deity. All of the characters discussed above are usually linked together and described as avatars of the confidence- man. Yet there are other characters who play important parts. Here we must deal with at least four» Noble, Win­ some, Egbert and Pitch. Charles Arnold Noble is in many respects the one character to deserve outrightly the labels of “con-man," "sharper" and "Mississippi operator." Yet, he does not dupe the Cosmopolitan, nor does he succeed in securing any money from him. Noble is referred to solely as "the stranger" by Melville, a label which is used consistently to indicate a suspicious personality. His appearance is described in language similar to nursery rhymes the phrasing of which gives the impression of a parodistic intention» "a man neither tall nor stout, neither short or gaunt? but with a body fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut? to say nothing of the fineness of the nap, seeming out of the keeping with something the reverse of fine in the skin." (0. 158) His whole appearance is at least "Curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality, contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of anguish sallowness of saving discretion lurking behind 45 it." (pp, 158-159) His teeth look extremely good, yet pos­ sibly "too good to be true." (p. 159) All in all, the description of Noble is somewhat equivocal though it hints at an unsavory character. He men­ tions that his overhearing the Cosmopolitan's conversation with Pitch has prompted his approach—a suspicious gambit when one considers that he approaches the Cosmopolitan in the same manner all the other characters who talk of confi­ dence approach their "victims." Both the Philosophical Intelligence Office representative and the Herb-doctor use similar methods of approaching their victims. Later in the interview, Noble wishes that Pitch were with him and the Cosmopolitan so that he might profit from their geniality. Such a sentiment is expressed by confidence men earlier» the man with a book expresses similar wishes towards Black Guinea and so does the Herb-doctor who wishes the man with a book were with him in his interview with the miser. Thus, the appearance of Noble, and some of his statements and the way he approaches the Cosmopolitan all serve to link him with earlier equivocal confidence men. Near the end of the interview with the Cosmopolitan, Noble suggests that he once belonged to an amateur dramatic company. The reader is tempted to interpret this suggestion as a lie, a cover-up for Noble's refusal to lend the Cosmo­ politan money and to justify the role he claims to have played in the Cosmopolitan's little necromancer scene. But 46 considering the manner in which Noble behaves throughout the interview, we have to accept his claim to have been an actor as a true one. When the Cosmopolitan wonders about Colonel Moredock, Noble, in a theatrical manner, mentions how he learned about the Colonel and how "A day in my boyhood is marked with a white stone—the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached? . . ." (p. 160) He admits that he never met the Colonel though he knows his story because he heard it from Judge James Hall. Noble proposes to tell the story as he heard it from the Judge. Here he goes into great effort explaining precisely how the Judge told the story? what kind of posture the Judge would take, how he would smoke his cigar and how he would address his audience. Noble argues that because the Judge told the story so many times, he fell into a style and a pattern that he followed every time he told it. Noble adds that he has a good memory and can repeat the story word for word as the Judge would tell it. The whole argument sounds so much like that of an actor who is conscious of all the details his role requires that it is impossible to be con­ strued in any other way. It seems Noble has a good memory, for next, he per­ forms the story of Moredock. His performance shows as that of an actor, for there is a great disparity between his ability to recite/perform a story and his inability to understand what he talks about. His mentality is not of *7 the caliber to understand a "metaphysics of Indian-Hating." Several comments and actions show his mediocre intelligence. When the Cosmopolitan says he will not hear the Judge's philosophy unless he knows to which "school of philosophy" the Judge belonged, Noble misunderstands the meaning of the idiom and answers by recounting the Judge's schooling his­ tory. Exasperated, the Cosmopolitan nevertheless asks Noble to proceed. The recitation takes some energy out of Noble, for when he is done he has to put his shirt in order and to adjust his pantaloons. When he finishes, Noble asserts again that he told someone else's story. Thus he dissoci­ ates himself from any approval or disapproval of the story that he may encounter from the Cosmopolitan, and can, in this way, stay on his listener's good side. This is also obvious in the discussion of Pitch, the Backwoodsman, that follows the long story of Colonel Moredock. Noble ventures an opinion of Pitch, though he attributes it to Judge Hall, which suggests Pitch is an Indian-Hater. When the Cosmopolitan disagrees, Noble is quick to say that the opinion he voiced about Pitch could be inaccurate. Thereafter, Noble is quick to agree with anything the Cosmopolitan says. His agreeableness shows an untrust­ worthy character and at the same time a not very intelligent one. The Cosmopolitan mentions that the pagan and 48 misanthrope are one. Noble first questions that statement but he hastens to agree with the Cosmopolitan that he never encountered evil or misanthropy and had only heard of them. Here the Cosmopolitan notices the agreement between his opinions and those of Noble and remarks to that effect? Noble "does his usual thing" and agrees. Noble claims that he is from the West, though later he identifies himself as an Alabamian, and invites the Cosmopolitan to drink with him. The Cosmopolitan agrees and port wine is ordered. Later Noble orders cigars--which implies that he did the ordering of the wine as well. In an interesting passage, unparalleled anywhere in The C onfid eno e-Man. the narrator informs us that Noble's eye turned towards the nearby bar "Watching the red-cheeked, white-aproned man there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly arranging the salver and glasses." (p. 181) Immediately, Noble remarks to the Cosmopolitan, with the air of someone who wants to cover up something, that their friendship was one at first sight. The ridiculousness of his remark is made apparent when he then remembers that they do not know each other's names. Here Noble looks at the wine bottle "with affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend not to” the initials vV "P.#," pasted on it. (p. 181) The Cosmopolitan suggests that it stands for port wine. Pretending to assent, Noble "Perplexedly eyeing the pleasing poser the bottle, • . • 49 with a strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup," says that good wine goes with good feeling, (p. 182) Adding that many claim that wine has been artificially made with chemicals and not with grapes, he invokes a curse on those doubters. Out of all this it seems that Noble wants to detract from the wine any suspicion and wants to establish that it is pure wine. But his clumsy attempts make the Cosmopolitan—and the reader as well—suspicious of him and of his wine. The suspicion increases when Noble, in every way he can—mostly fabricated, awkward and obviously artificial—tries to make the Cosmopolitan drink excessively while he himself drinks but little. His wine must be impure, for while pledging the friendship of the Cosmopolitan he takes only a small sip yet cannot manage to hide an "Involun­ tary wryness to his mouth." (p. 183) But when the Cosmo­ politan returns the pledge he takes a large draught and follows that with a big smack of the lips. His pledge promises as pure a friendship as the wine. He adds that some men would drink it even if it is bad because it is better than none. This makes Noble nervous and fidgety as if something about him has been discovered. When the Cosmopolitan adds that the idea is humor­ ous and a man who drinks because of such a reason cannot be bad—for humor redeems a man and one who laughs cannot be a villain—Noble immediately chuckles as if by doing so he exonerates himself. He laughs and points to a pathetic 50 little boy. It seems that at this point the Cosmopolitan under­ stands Noble completely, for he says that Noble's laugh illustrated his point as the example of a teacher with his "Made-up experiment." As if to test Noble, he adds that it is said one may smile and be a villain but no one said that one may laugh and be a villain—and Noble laughs his agreement. When the Cosmopolitan gives another example of the same sort to continue testing and uncovering the deceit, Noble hastens to say it is a funny example but when the Cosmopolitan says it is a cruel one, Noble is silent and regretful. For the first time he disagrees with the Cosmopoli­ tan, mainly because he expressed his view before he heard what the other had to say about it. To see if Noble is really stupid, the Cosmopolitan gives another test—one that is appropriate to the reluctant drinker Noble—for the test suggests that rascals approve temperance movements because they want to benefit by them. The attention is too keen on his not drinking, "perhaps, or perhaps not, to e draw attention from himself," Noble mentions a panegyric of the press he knows and asks if the Cosmopolitan would like to hear it. (p. 186) Thus Noble resorts to his per­ forming ability to divert the attention of the Cosmopolitan from his real plan. The Cosmopolitan praises the press while Noble, pretending to be an attentive listener, keeps 51 filling his partner's glass. Noble's eulogy of the wine press, appropriate to his character, is delivered in a style parodying the psalms. Finished, Noble orders cigars but lights only one for the Cosmopolitan and exhorts him to smoke and drink. Noble keeps brushing the Cosmopolitan off whenever the latter asks him to drink or smoke. Finally he invents a poor excuse not to drink when the Cosmopolitan suggests to him that some people are afraid of impairing self-possession by smoking and drinking the same time. Again, Noble, trying to divert attention away from himself, starts a discussion of Polonius’ advice to Laertes. Noble introduces Polonius specifically for other possible reasons. Probably he knows about Polonius through acting and thus he is resorting to his profession for help because he wants to attack the frugality and cautiousness of Polonius and thus preempt a similar sentiment in the Cosmo­ politan, his proposed victim. Here the Cosmopolitan says, ambiguously, that he is feeling the ill-effect of an imma­ ture mind consorting too much with a mature one. Noble, with the complacency of the fool, takes it as a compliment to him. Elated and confident, Noble adds that some people say that Shakespeare wanted to open people’s eyes to evil. The Cosmopolitan, slowly expanding his eyes, (p. 194) says that there is no evil in the world to open one's eyes to. Apparently warming up to ask for a loan, Noble con­ demns one aspect of Polonius' advice to Laertes that 52 counsels against lending or borrowing money. Again he urges his companion to drink and be genial but he does not drink himself. In response, the Cosmopolitan talks in abstract terms about geniality. Weary and puzzled over abstract terms he cannot follow, Noble urges his companion to drink more. The Cosmopolitan, meanwhile, is calmly companionable as opposed to Noble who deceitfully says he is getting excited because he drank too much. Here the Cosmopolitan decides to open his heart to his proclaimed friend and asks for a loan. The perception and intelligence of the Cosmo­ politan is obvious here. He shows his one-upmanship over Noble by smoothly beating him to the request of a loan. Noble is shocked, buttons up, and is ready to leave, saying he has never been so deceived in anybody in his life. "Hissing" his words, Noble changes and looks like a serpent. The Cosmopolitan breaks the spell by placing golden half- eagles around Noble who, charmed by the sight of the money, regains his former personality. Rational once more, Noble explains that he was an actor and was able to play along with the Cosmopolitan’s joke. The Cosmopolitan, completely aware of the kind of person Noble is, mockingly agrees that Noble did second the joke "to the life." Appropriately, Melville interrupts the narration to explain that characters in fiction should be like characters in plays, thus hinting to the reader to see the characters of The Confidence-Man especially in the case of Noble, as 53 actors. Noble, running out of antics to cover up his ner­ vousness, asks the Cosmopolitan to talk about anything he wants to talk about. It is obvious that Noble at this point has been com­ pletely uncovered by the Cosmopolitan who proceeds to tell a story about Charlemont, a man who lost his fortune because he was afraid to ask for help from his friends. Charlemont leaves the country to come back and continue his friendships only when he has accumulated a new fortune. The Cosmopolitan asks if Charlemont*s opinion of his friends is justified from Noble’s view of friendship. Because the obligatory negative response to this rhetorical question lays the ground suitable for the Cosmo­ politan to ask a loan and be assured of it, Noble answers negatively but, without stopping, he excuses himself, giving the effects of the wine on his head as the reason. Thus Noble leaves hurriedly not only because he was defeated and uncovered but also to escape another request of money by the Cosmopolitan. It is clear at this point that Noble's wine, which he tried to make the Cosmopolitan drink exces­ sively, cannot be pure wine. The wine is possibly diluted and thus Noble's game is to make the Cosmopolitan drink much and pay much to the bartender who, in light of his unusual appearance in the scene, is possibly a co-conspirator. One notices that the Cosmopolitan drinks a good quantity above what he believes his capacity to be and still remains sober and calm. As another possibility, the wine could have been tinkered with and made strong to befuddle the man who drinks it, who would consequently be made an easy victim of a sharper. One again notices that Noble remarks, incredu­ lously, that the Cosmopolitan has a strong head and can drink a large quantity and still be calm. Of the remaining characters to be discussed, Mark Winsome, identified by many critics as Emerson, has a look of Puritan propriety and farmer’s dignity? controlling him is a strange mixture of shrewdness and mythiness. His appearance leads an observer to think of him as a balanced character somewhere between a Tartar Priest and a Yankee Peddler. Winsome, appearing as a mystic who talks incon­ sistently, preaches a philosophy bordering on the hedonistic when he talks about the freedom from knowledge. He preaches a oneness with nature that lacks any compassion and sym­ pathy. He shows a wide array of knowledge, yet he exhibits with this knowledge a complete solipsism. Talking incon­ sistently, and eclectically, he exhibits a mind muddled with the knowledge it has acquired. Yet he thinks he knows that man in this world is supposed to work and not "befog himself with vain subtleties." (p. 223) Critics disagree on whether to see Egbert, the disciple of Winsome, as either a caricature of Thoreau or of the practical side of Emerson. He could be either. The "commercial-looking" Egbert is described as of a neuter 55 kind, neither appealing or unappealing "so that it seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out." (p. 225) Egbert teaches Winsome’s philosophy through example. So he and the Cosmopolitan pretend they are friends and act a scene. Egbert tells a story to illustrate his points. Egbert sounds like Winsome in most of his statements. As his teacher, Egbert exhibits an icy-cold lip towards charity and confidence. Their cold-heartedness could be interpreted to damn Winsome and Egbert. Yet because the man they are dealing with is equivocal, the reader remains uncertain, despite any like or dislike of their attitudes, whether or not they were morally sound in their conduct. At the middle of The Confidence-Man, the reader meets Pitch, the Missouri Bachelor, who is described by many critics as the one character with whom Melville sym- z pathizes. His appearance is equivocal, however, and the narrator’s attitude towards Pitch is equally ambiguous, offering many possible interpretations. In fact he is one of several characters who approaches other characters and urges them to distrust, "Ursine in aspect," he warns the miser against trusting Nature. Yet he, a misanthrope, is finally convinced to put trust in human nature though he recants of his temporary trust immediately after he is left alone. There are a host of other characters who appear in The Confidence-Man, most of whom are not treated as 56 extensively as the characters already discussed. This more cursory treatment makes these characters less complex but does not diminish their importance nor make them appear less ambiguous in motives or in moral worth. Of these characters, a wooden-legged man, a man with gold sleeve buttons, a soldier of fortune, the barber, an old man,7 a young boy and a tract-seller are more important than another fairly large group of characters who include a student, the merchant, two clergymen, a lady, a miser, a sick man and "an invalid Titan" among others. There are few fiction-within-fiction characters who are important. The reality and truth of these characters, namely Goneril, Judge Hall, Colonel Moredock, Charlemont, China Aster and Orchis--are by necessity more tenuous than the reality and truths of the rest of the characters. Despite this fact and more tenuous treatment, through the attempts of the fictional narrators and creators of these characters, they do emerge as characters with motives and moral worth that seem to be definite. However, because the reasons for their existence, the circumstances in which their tales are told and the reasons for these tales are vague and nebulous, they remain equivocal. They are brought to existence by suspicious characters who want to lend authenticity and vigour to their own equivocal positions. They remain one-dimensional shadows who, though often clear and defined in outline (through large and colorful treatment 57 in some cases) remain owners of a flimsy reality. Thus, Melville proves true to his statements about characterization when he shapes the characters of The Confi­ dence-Man. At first meeting any of these characters, the reader is invited to judge them by their appearance, only to be made aware abruptly that appearances signify nothing more than the surfaces. The reader is also reminded, through incident and dialogue, that motives and psychology of char­ acters cannot be ascertained, for character is inconsistent and changes according to no predictable manner. Because of difficulty in understanding individual characters, the reader is made unwilling to make quick moral judgments on any of the characters. While keeping in mind all the con­ clusions drawn above about Melville’s characters, chosen from the towns of his experiences, one has to wonder about p the way Melville arranges them in the world they people. 58 FOOTNOTES

Throughout this study, quotations are from The Con­ fidence-Man» His Masquerade« ed. Elizabeth S. Foster (Hendrick House, Inc.» New York, 1954). Pagination will be incorporated in parentheses in the text. 2In many respects the restrictions do and actually did stop him from creating characters. These restrictions supply some of the reasons Melville discarded the writing of fiction for a period of some thirty years after compos­ ing The Confidence-Man. ^Regarding the mute, Watson G. Branch in "The Mute as ’Metaphysical Scamp*," The Confidence-Man» His Mas­ querade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), PP. 317-318, argues that the mute is innocent only if all the other avatars of the con man are. Branch offers the diversity of opinions on the mute as evidence of the mute’s equivocality. Since the "lamb-like" is not on the Negro's list, other critics argue that he is not an avatar. But Branch counters that Melville most probably wrote chapters one and two after writing chapter three; and since the con man is at the center of all chapters except chapter twenty-three, logically he must be at the center of the first two chapters. Branch further argues that the character who has a great entrance in a book entitled The Confidence-Man, should be the con man. Saada Ishag in "Herman Melville as an Existentialist» An Analysis of Typee. Mardi. Moby Dick, and The Confidence-Man," The Emporia State Research Studies, 14 (December, 1965), 5-41, sees the mute as does Branch and attests that the lamb-like is the con man. However there are other opinions of the "lamb-like." J. J. Gross in "Melville’s The Confi­ dence-Man» The Problem of Source and Meaning," Bulletin of the Modern Language Association of Helsinki, 60 (September 25» 1959), 309» argues that the deaf mute is clearly not the confidence man. James E. Miller, Jr. declares in A Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville (New York, 1962), p. 177. that the "Mute is Christ bringing the essence of Christian ethical message to the world," J. C. Oates sees the mute as the symbolic representation of an ethic that is heavenly and which is to be found unfit for this world but whose inno­ cence is the signpost of the‘ideal Christian principle, ("Melville and the Manichean Illusion," Texas Studies in Literature, 4 (Spring, 1962), 123). On the other hand, Lawrence Grauman, Jr. in "Suggestions on the Future of The Confidence-Man," Papers on English Language and Literature, 1 (Summer, 1965), 241-249, finds the mute emblematic of Christ. Yet whether by intention or not, he "sets up" the passengers for the scheme of the con man. Grauman asserts 59 the lamb-like is the first avatar who with his followers is the embodiment of the same force, the Devil. Grauman adds that the lamb-like appears in the beginning of the book as a reminder.of a lost cause. Edward Mitchell agrees with Grau­ man in his essay "From Action to Essence« Some Notes on the Structure of Melville’s The Confidence-Man." American Litera ture, 40 (March, 1968), p. 32, and affirms that the deaf- mute is the purveyor of confidence upon which all con men depend. Mitchell concludes that the cosmopolitan and the deaf-mute are not to be considered different in kind. Bruce Franklin argues in The Wake of the Gods« Melville’s Mythology (Stanford, 1963)0 P. 155, that the lamb-like is most probably the first avatar of the con man since, among other reasons, he literally introduces the first sentence about confidence« his message is the oral polemics of later avatars? he disappears and at the same spot the reader sees Black Guinea? and if he is not the con man, then the con man’s advent is never described. However, Elizabeth Foster sees the lamb-like different from those who follow the character and in no way an imposter, for he is innocent of fraud and is "unequivocal." (pp. 1-lii) And so does Ray B. Browne, who in Melville's Drive to Humanism. Purdue University Studies (Lafayette, Indiana, 1971), pp. 304-305, finds the mute to be separated from the con man and to represent the Savior of the world. He adds that Melville does not use words of equivocation to describe the mute. Joel Porte in The Romance in America» Studies in Cooper. Poe. Hawthorne, Melville and James' "(Middletown, I9S95» p. 158, finds the mute a self-portrait of Melville "the romancer ... as an alienated . . . dispossessed . . . idiotic nobody . , . out of touch with his environment . . . and unable to communicate directly." 4Regarding Black Guinea, critics speculated over Black Guinea's list of people whom he claimed would vouch for him, and the relationship of this list to the different disguises of the con man. Bruce H. Franklin in The Wake of the Gods« Melville's Mythology, suggests that Melville wants us to know who is who in his book by looking at the characters’ colors, what they carry and the role they play. He asserts that there are more than ten guises of the con­ fidence man in the book. He points out (pp. 160-161) that Black Guinea speaks in a dialect which makes any of his words a possible pun which in turn makes Black Guinea's list conspicuous and ultimately one that ultimately includes everybody. A different interpretation is offered by James E. Miller, Jr. who asserts in A Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville (p. 178) that Black Guinea is the devil, and that the con man appears in six guises. Yet Miller notices two victims of the con man who appear on Guinea's list» the man who is a soldier, and the man in a yellow vest (Charles Noble) and in both cases the con man realizes their identity 60 and does the friendly thing, (p. 182) Another scholar, Elizabeth Foster, argues that Melville carried the dog-like Negro from "Benito Cereno" as a symbol for the universal malice disguised as fidelity and love. (p. lii) Along the same.line, Ray B. Browne finds Black Guinea clearly repre­ senting Satan, the "natural" and pagan aspects of humanity, (p. 313) Philip Drew in "Appearance and Reality in Mel­ ville’s The Confidence-Man," E. L. H., 31 (December, 1964), 418-442, finds that one cannot equate Black Guinea and the Devil because this is only an assumption that cannot be taken for granted, (p. 442) Drew does not dispute the con­ tention that all the strangers are manifestations of one man but he says it is impossible to prove that they are, although it is convenient to treat all these strangers as one because they appear successively and perform the same function, (p. 422) Drew argues that not all the disguises have the same status. Some deserve complete charity (Black.Guinea and the mute)» some are harmless but inspire suspicion (man with a weed, man with a book, and man in a ray coat)» some who are easy to distrust though harmless fman from Philosophical Intelligence Office and the herb- doctor)» and finally, Goodman who is not always serious and sometimes has unattractive causes yet is a comprehensive figure, (p. 436) ^Regarding the Cosmopolitan, Foster finds him the climactic con man (p. Ixiv), while Shroeder finds him related to Beelzebub, the much-traveled Prince who likes the good dish man (p. 326), and James E. Miller, Jr. describes him as the sum of all the con man's other appear­ ances. (p. 179) Bruce Franklin remarks that from midpoint on the book is taken over by the Cosmopolitan who cor­ responds along with the characters he meets to Black Guinea’s "gemmen" he promised will vouch for him. We cannot tell who is the con man from these characters. Franklin conjectures that the Cosmopolitan most probably is the last avatar of the con man although he does not fit any of the descriptions given by Black Guinea. He donates money and receives none (except for the shave), he confronts the Mississippi riverboat con man, he grows in stature and is the main character of half the book. Franklin remarks that there are hints that the Cosmopolitan may be a true savior who appears after a series of false saviors, (pp. 164-165) Frank Jaster’s "Melville’s Cosmopolitan» The Experience of Life in The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade," Southern Quarterly. 8 (January, 1970),201-210, declares the Cosmo­ politan a persona, a "symbolic representation of life itself as reflected in the various facets of the individual facing it." He is neither Satan nor one of his party. "He is life. He meets all who come his way in the manner in which they ask to be met." Paul Smith asserts that the Cosmo­ politan is the traditional Satan of the romantic period who 61 for all his deceit still has pity for mankind in whose sin he recognizes his own. Thus, through him Melville could reaffirm the value of compassion« "The Confidence-Man and the Literary World of New York," Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 16 (March, 1962), 329-337. ^The arguments over the Mississippi Bachelor, Pitch, are as numerous and diverse as those concerning the lamb­ like character. In "Sources and Symbols for Melville's Confidence-Man," The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), 298-316, John W. Shroeder considers him the most difficult person for the con man to dupe for he is theologically sound and his vision does not ignore the dark side of the universe. Pitch is aware that nature is cursed for Man's sake. (p. 308) He has no confi­ dence in the false bright side of things and he is the only man who has a chance against the snake, (p. 314) John Seelye in Melville» The Ironic Diagram (Evanston, Illinois, 1970), p. 127, considers Pitch the exceptional example in the novel. He sees Pitch at the center of the narrative and the ethical ideal of the book. A balanced character, guarded but warm, and the only solution to the threats of the world. Paul McCarthy in "Affirmative Elements in The Confidence-Man," American Transcendental Quarterly, 7 Part 2 (Summer, 1970), p, 59» sees Pitch as the most important moral character whose most obvious quality is ingrained skepticism. He is the frontiersman and in a larger sense he becomes the American. In Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1965), PP. 297-301, Daniel Hoffman emphasizes the Western elements in Pitch's charac­ ter. Hoffman sees the shift of sympathy to the Western figure from the Yankee peddler complete in the characters of Pitch and Moredock. He maintains that the western character is tempered in adversity and is on guard toward evil. Yet he notices that Pitch is cast in a role that is the reverse of the usual frontiersman’s» he has ethical vision without power. In Frontier» American Literature and the American West (Princeton, 1965), PP. 315-316, Edwin Fussell considers Pitch the most complicated, broadly human character, and the ambassador of the real West in the novel. He also considers Pitch's notions similar to those of Mel­ ville and brings as evidence the fact that Pitch is the one who uttered Melville's anti-confidence prayer. Pitch is seen as human and thus errs. He is considered Melville’s private salvation, for in artlessness as in integrity he represents an altogether new West, arising from the catas­ trophes of the 185O's and obtaining perspective from them. Finally, Ray B. Browne finds Pitch and Colonel Moredock to be evil supermen because they are suspicious, uncharitable and misanthropic. 62 ^Critics have argued over the identity and symbolic value of the old man whom the Cosmopolitan meets at the end of the book. Hoffman considers him the ultimate dupe in the masquerade, American grown old in ignorance of evil. (p. 308) Miller finds him an easy victim for the devil, a simple Christian who cannot understand that absolute divine law does not apply to the human situation, (p. 192) Oates sees him as a Christian who does not believe in Christianity, (p. 127) Richard Chase sees the old man as Uncle Sam on the cultural level, while in Melville’s universe he is the Old God and Father of all the planets» Herman Melville» A Critical Study (New York, 1949), P. 205. Finally, Marius Bewley considers him a patriarch who symbolizes God and who is duped by appearances« The Eccentric Design» Form in the Classical American Novel (New York, 1959), P. 125. Q In Chapter Forty-four, Melville writes» "Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for his stock, just as the agricul­ turalist goes to the cattle-show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters—that is, original ones." (p. 270) CHAPTER III

TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL ASPECTS OF PLOT

Followed or ignored by writers, Aristotle's dicta in the Poetics are discussed by scholars and writers alike. His pronouncements about plot are treated either as points of departure or as laws by which to judge art. The deep and far-reaching influence of these pronouncements cannot be fully appreciated until one finds them applied to a suc­ cessful work that does not seem to have followed them. The Confidence-Man is such a work. Aristotle insists that plot must be of a structure that has reasons for starting where it starts and for end­ ing where it ends while the incidents and the action in it follow a clear chain of causation including nothing that is irrelevant or coincidental. Aristotle frowned on episodic plots where the sense of causality is missing. He thought of plot as a movement or a general idea which is the bones to flesh with episodes. Aristotle's definition is very precise and, through causality, demands a coherence that evinces a clear idea and vision. Among the twentieth-century writers, E. M. Forster, one of the most distinguished writers to discuss the theoretical aspects of writing fiction, is not less emphatic about the necessity of causality. In fact, causality for 64 him is what distinguishes a plot from a story. Again, this view implies an overview that controls the selection of incidents to support a vision or idea. Thus, Aristotle and Forster agree that the process of selecting causally-interrelated episodes from the multi­ farious experience is necessary to make a plot. In a sense, they both see plot as an artificial patterning of things» to focus life, to bring order out of life and to give mean­ ing to life. After discussing both Aristotle's and For­ ster's views of plot, C, Hugh Holman formulates a definition of plot that draws on their discussions« "Plot is an intel­ lectual formulation about the relationships existing among the incidents of a Drama or a Narrative, and it is, there­ fore, a guiding principle for the author and an ordering control for the reader."^ Holman adds that the formulation he mentions is mainly of incidents» i.e., characters, action and how they interrelate. There are other ingredients that are deemed necessary for a successful plot. Conflict is one of these aspects without which, Holman for one argues, there can be no plot. The struggle between conflicting forces within a work pro­ vides causality and takes the shape of a "Rising Action," leading to a point of crisis or a "Climax" or suspense then followed by a "Falling Action« and a "Denouement." This is best illustrated by Gustav Freytag's Pyramid which was originally meant to illustrate the movement in a five-act 65 drama, yet is generally applied, mostly with the use of paralleling terms, to fiction. 2 Regardless of which of the above definitions of plot one chooses to adopt, obviously there is no definition that does not include in its premise a prevailing order and a vision of the world in which the plot operates. Such vision functions to make the reader evaluate and estimate the hero? it tries to make him judge the nature of the things that happen to the "hero," and finally tries to assign some kind of responsibility to this "hero." In short, in all these definitions there is an assumption of a knowable and explain able universe. Because of this assumption, novels that question the knowability and explainability of the universe both in form and content are often rejected as chaotic, plotless, inferior and hopelessly ambiguous. Early treatments of The Confidence-Man—operating as they were, under the impress of such Aristotelian causality- had to judge it as a chaotic or an unfinished book, one that has no plot and thus fails to communicate.3 Because of the premise of these studies, their estimates are predictable. The “plot" of The Confidence-Man, the argument goes, is one that deserves the name only by a far stretch of the imagina­ tion. It is of the worst kind of plot in the Aristotelian scheme. It is full of episodes not causally connected. It does not seem to have a logical beginning, middle or end. It starts suddenly at sunrise and ends abruptly the same day, 66 a little after midnight. The scene does not change, since it is on the same boat. This unity of place is not urged by Aristotle, but Melville’s book satisfies the critics who call for it. Aristotle suggested a unity of time and this unity is observed in The Confidence-Man since the action takes no more than what was suggested in The Poetics. Of course, the major unity urged by Aristotle is that of action Melville’s book, on the surface at least, does not seem to have any unity of action. Not only does it seem to lack the "good" unifying elements, it seems to lack even the "worst" kind of unifying element» Unity of Hero. It seems that no other kind of unity appears in the novel. The book seems to have the two unessential unities and nothing else. Characters appear for a short time and leave, not to reappear. Each has his own world and seems detached from the other characters, having, at least on the surface, nothing in common with the others beside the fact that they are all on the same boat. With all this in mind, it is impossible to find an apparent Rising Action, a Climax, a Falling Action and Denouement. There seems no causality to link what happens in the first scene with what happens in the second or in any other scene in the whole book. If we accept the elements earlier students of The Confidence- Man considered to be important, we are bound to agree with them that the book is a failure and worth studying only as . the last book of a writer who had written an earlier 67 masterpiece but whose powers reached their nadir in this book, after which he stopped writing professionally. Needless to assert, this kind of judgment results from the kind of scholarly study that starts from precon­ ceived standards and notions and moves into the analysis of the works themselves. The Romantics, through their organic theory of art, moved into the consideration of a work of art as making its own standards and limits by which it must be evaluated. If this alone is the criterion for giving a writer the Romantic label then Melville is a Romantic writer. Yet the Romantics were not alone in this respect. Henry James in "The Art of Fiction" calls for a similar way of treating the art work. He suggests the judging of a work of art on whether or not it is successful in producing what it proposes to accomplish. James and the modern scholars who attempt to evalu­ ate art the same way he did, tend noticeably to avoid the terminology associated with "plot." But there is no new terminology to replace the old terms—except perhaps James' use of "picture" and "scene," and the rather modern use of the words "structure" and "pattern." The problem is essentially one that stems from the lack of vocabulary to describe forms in the temporal arts because our idea of form is a spatial one. The exception among the temporal arts is drama which though temporal, yet extends itself visually and pictorially. 4 This explains why James talks 68 about the novel in terms of "picture" and "scene»" it also explains the use of "structure” and "pattern." All of these terms are spatial in nature. Once one realizes this fact there remains no reason why he should not use and talk about "plot." For "plot" is essentially spatial in nature once freed from the rigid connotation attached to it. If Hol­ man’s definition quoted above is taken for what it says and if the rigid requirements discussed earlier are disre­ garded it would prove an acceptable definition that would apply to any work. Of course, one has to keep in mind that narration is basically a temporal art. This is why, by necessity, we have to talk about a spatial and a temporal aspect of plot. The temporal plot of The Confidence-Man is not of the kind where a writer develops a logically articulated series of events where each event by its content, timing and placing contributes to a design that will prove a single possible conclusion. That kind of plot, in the way the different parts are integrated, serves as a demonstration that leaves a predictable outcome. Also, it is suited to underscore a fundamental idea of cause and effect pattern. Melville employs a temporal plot of a kind that would develop and reveal the experience Melville has divined in the intuitive mind of his reader. His method is linked with the process by which he modified and created his char­ acters through half-shown signs which left the imagination 69

of his readers to supply, at times without knowing it, the incidents that are needed to complete the whole picture by associating together essential events or scenes. Melville is not exactly economical nor clear and coherent in the sequence and order he gives to the incidents. There are gaps to be bridged by the imagination. These gaps have a positive function« evoking an imaginative reaction. In every instance, Melville represents the incident that excites the imagination of his audience to a comprehension of the basic experience and—to borrow a phrase from Fermer and apply it to The Confidence-Man—a "perception of nexus of truths too vast to be defined. The sequence of events is ordered by Melville’s artistic logic. It is an exercise in frustration to try finding a symmetrical pattern in the temporal plot of The Confidence-Man. Many scholars have tried, producing the magical formula that eluded everyone else, explaining the entire sequence. However, no one yet has produced such a formula, at least one that would account for everything in the book. The failure is due partly to the insistence of these scholars on finding a causality linking incidents and thus finding a linear progression. The Confidence-Man seems to lend itself partially to this kind of interpretation. In the final analysis of the temporal plot it will be seen that Melville does not pro­ pose to convince his reader of following a particular 70 philosophy of life nor does he advocate any kind of action. Rather, he makes the universal theme of literature—appear­ ance as it contrasts with reality- -the center of his book. Not that Melville tries to show his readers which is appear­ ance and which is reality. But he does indicate that "which is what" is, in many respects, similar to the case of the ugly duckling» the ugliness and beauty both lie in the eyes of the beholder. The reader is as responsible as Melville in any judgment he makes. What happens aboard the microcosmic book The: Confi­ dence-Man? The story starts at sunrise on the first day of April and spans the whole day and evening and ends shortly after midnight. The place is St. Louis and a steamboat, the Fidele which looks like a "white washed fort" on a float­ ing isle, is about to depart for New Orleans. A man, mute, deaf, larab-like, dressed in cream-colors, and a stranger in the extremest sense of the word, steps aboard. He comes to a placard near the captain's office that offers a reward for the capture of an imposter who, described as "an original genius," is supposed to have come lately from the East. The stranger holds next to the placard a small slate of his on which he writes words about charity that contrast sharply with the "No Trust" sign the barber of the boat has hung on his shop, and also with the crowd reading the placard since there are many thieves among them. Rejected several times, the stranger sleeps against a ladder's foot and "not 71 unlikely," the narrator reminds us, he disembarks at one of many following stops never to be seen again. The passengers hold different opinions of the mute and so does the reader, but before he can make up his mind, the boat is on her way down the Mississippi, the symbol of the "all-fusing spirit of the West." (p. 8) The passengers do not lack variety and the narrator makes it clear that they represent humanity in general. In his description of the congress of the multiform characters, the narrator suggests a framework for the whole book. He compares the crowd to Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims and thus leaves the door open to the suggestion that the differ­ ent characters and the episodes in which they appear func­ tion in the same manner the tales and characters of Chaucer functioned. The reader meets next a variety of characters. A crippled negro nicknamed Black Guinea begs for money and tries to catch pennies in his mouth in a pitch-penny game. This "game of Charity" continues until a man with a wooden leg accuses Black Guinea of assuming his deformity for the sake of charity. The whole crowd turns suspicious towards Guinea. A young Episcopal clergyman asks Guinea to justify himself or to present someone who can vouch for him. Guinea mentions that there are many gentlemen who could speak for him. Guinea describes some of the gentlemen who would vouch for himt "Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here 72 a werry nice, good g’nman wid a weeA, and a ge’mman in a gray coat and white tie, what knows all about me; and a ge’mman wid a big book, too; and a yarb-doctor; and a ge'mman in a yaller west; and a ge’mman wid a brass plate; and a ge’mman in a wiolet robe; and a ge’mman as is a soldier; and so many good, kind, honest ge'mmen more abord what knows me and will speak for me, God bress 'em."-(pp. 13-14) The catalogue of these characters is significant because the reader meets all of them later. Due to this fact the first three chapters of The Confidence-Man. because of their nature, parallel Chaucer's "Prologue" in setting the frame­ work for the whole book and paving the way for different stories of different characters to be assembled together. In such reading, the end of the book can be explained not as an "end," but (as is the case with Chaucer's tales) rather, a sort of continuation in which the framework is left open-ended and unfinished. "The Episopal Clergyman" looks for one of these gentlemen, while a Methodist minister starts urging "the wooden-legged man" to have charity. "The wooden-legged man" snaps back that charity belongs to heaven and not to this earth. When the minister shakes the suspicious man, the latter shouts that everyone on the boat is a fool and adds that his doubts are now planted with everyone on ship. His hint that everyone will be suspicious comes true until a country merchant gives Black Guinea a half dollar and 73 accidentally drops his business card which the negro stomps on and covers, unobserved. Next the crowd disperses and the negro leaves, not to be seen again. Up to this point the two characters who have occupied the center of attention seem unrelated--except in the fact that both have hair described as "fleecy," both try to indulge in the charity of the crowd, and at the same time look innocently suspicious. The reader who expects to see these two characters later is disappointed. If he starts wondering whether these two characters are innocents or sharpers, as the crowd around both of them wonder, he is not helped by the narrator to make up his mind. A new character appears and identifies himself as John Ringman. He has a widower's weed in his hat—which reminds the reader of Black Guinea's list of characters. Ringman approaches the country merchant, Mr. Roberts, and claims that they knew each other. Ringman insists that a head injury must have made Mr. Roberts forget. Roberts admits that he did have brain fever a while ago. Roberts also admits that he is a mason when Ringman suggests that they are both masons. These facts leave the suspicion that Ringman got Roberts* business card from Guinea a "mere strong suspicion." After hearing the singular story of terrible misery that Ringman tells and the supplication that follows, Roberts gives Ringman a banknote. To show his gratitude, Ringman offers Roberts information about 74 Black Rapids Coal Company stock certificates. Skeptical, Roberts asks why Ringman did not avail himself of the oppor­ tunity, to which Ringman mentions his pennilessness, seems offended, and leaves. Alone, Ringman "seems" unreserved and softened by meditation of the kindness he received. He is melancholic, but not alone for long. A sophomoric young scholar holding a book by Tacitus approaches. Ringman asserts that the book is moral poison, that it leads its reader into cynicism. Ringman urges the student to drop Tacitus and, instead, to read Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination." Ringman pro­ tests that Tacitus destroys confidence and asks whether the student could put trust in him. Though fascinated, the student, tongue-tied, withdraws without uttering a word. This is the last we see of Ringman. We hear about him from Roberts later. But Ringman’s appearance at this point of the narrative does not seem to have any strong logical rea­ son of causality. The appearance of Ringman as the first of the gentlemen witnesses helps to confirm the argument that Guinea’s list is intended by Melville to be the tool by which the reader is to know that all of these characters are related in some suspicious way. The first four charac­ ters mentioned by Guinea do appear in the same order, but after that the characters who appear do not follow Guinea’s order. The new face seen, one that might be mistaken for 75 that of Ringman, is that of a man with a white tie and a gray coat. He is the second man mentioned by Guinea. This character tries unsuccessfully to get contributions to a Widow and Orphan Asylum of the Seminóles from a rich gentle­ man. He solicits an older gentleman for contributions with­ out any success. He receives some abuse from this older gentleman who accuses him of being a cheat. The Episcopal clergyman comes up to the man with gray coat and white tie and is happy to have found one of the gentlemen Guinea described. The clergyman gets a confirmation of Guinea’s honesty. At this point, the wooden-legged man reappears and counters the claim of the man in gray that the suspicious man’s feelings are his own torture with a story about a Frenchman who tardily suspects his unfaithful wife. The wooden-legged man repeats his accusations that Black Guinea is only an actor. The man in gray, protesting that the negro has disembarked and thus a verification of his identity is impossible, asks if it is reasonable to suppose that a man would go to so much trouble for so little reward. The cynic, before leaving, answers that Satan did not get any money as a reward for tempting Eve. As a result of the cynic’s arguments, the Episcopal­ ian minister feels doubts and suspicions of Guinea. But the man in gray argues the minister into defeating distrust by striving to cling to trust. He also asks for a contribu­ tion for the Seminóles and gets it. The man in gray next 76 asks for contributions from a man with gold sleeve-buttons who in his immaculateness seems to be the embodiment of good­ ness. The man with gold sleeve-buttons gives his contribu­ tion in new crisp bills. The man in gray coat next talks about his trip to the World’s Fair where he demonstrated his cure-all Protean Easy-chair and where he conceived a plan for world charity to be organized with the Wall Street spirit and principle. The man of goodness contributes money and disembarks. Left alone, the man in gray wanders into the ladies' saloon where he engages in conversation a lady read­ ing the New Testament—possibly induced to read this by the mute. He asks the lady to have confidence in him which she subsequently does and gives him a contribution to the Seminole Asylum. Here, the man in gray leaves the scene for good. The man in gray coat and white tie is linked to Black Guinea by his appearance on the latter's list and by his testimony as to the character of the negro. There is a resemblance between him and Ringman in looks, in the way they both encounter Roberts and their favorite topic for conversation, confidence. But this is, at best, inconclu­ sive evidence as to whether they are related causally in their actions or that the three characters are manifesta­ tions of one character. In every case the reader begins by trusting the character until suspiciousness is induced by either cynical 77 characters or the nature of the character's action. Con­ sistently, one character would argue in favor of an earlier character. As a result of these cross-scene references and testimonials, the narrative gains cohesiveness and continuity. But these references are too brief and flimsy to be made the solid line of a traditional plot. * * * The next character we meet is a man carrying a big book under his arm. He seems to be the third man on Guinea’s list. The man with a book inquires, from the student, about the man with a weed in order to give him a contribution. The student sees the words "Black Rapids Coal Company" on the big book and tries to take the opportunity to buy some of the Company's stock which seems to be in demand. The character who identifies himself as president and transfer agent of the company reluctantly sells the student some shares. He tries to sell some shares in the New Jerusalem but the student cautiously refuses to buy any. When the student talks sarcastically of the man with a weed, the transfer agent, somewhat insulted, leaves. The transfer agent is next seen in a gambling room where an old man refuses to be "genial" with him. After reading an ode on the intimations of distrust, the man with a book chances to sit next to Mr. Roberts. When Mr. Roberts sees the lettering on the book, he asks the transfer agent to sell him some stocks and the latter allows Roberts to 78 persuade him to sell some shares, in the ensuing conversa­ tion we learn that the man with a book does not know someone with the name Ringman, and that he does not know Black Guinea, though he ventures an opinion of him. The reader would remember that Guinea mentioned him as a possible wit­ ness, while though he was mentioned by Ringman, the latter never professed to know him. Thus the connecting lines of relationships become more and more complicated and impos­ sible to verify beyond a doubt. Mr. Roberts mentions the cases of a miser and the crippled negro as dispiriting examples. The transfer agent protests that he does not like stories about people who lack confidence. To counter, Roberts tells the story of Ringman and his misfortunes. He attests that Ringman told part of the story and that a man in gray coat and a white tie confirmed it and added to it. The story involves Ringman's wife, Goneril, who was vicious, cactus-like and who—besides having a strange diet— had an evil touch. When Goneril started tormenting their little daughter, Ringman fled away with the daughter. But Goneril sued him and tried to have him pronounced insane. Ringman managed to flee and had led a wandering life. His misery was relieved by the news of Goneril’s death—hence the mourning weed in his hat. Though touched by the story, the man with the big book presents a temperate view of it and protests that Ringman's trouble is another case 79 exemplifying the need for trusting providence. The merchant admits that this last statement is true. The two men share a bottle of wine which, affecting the merchant, induces a burst against confidence from his heart. The man with a book is upset and parts from his companion after they are reconciled. The narrator who told in his words the mer­ chant’s story of Ringman digresses at this point to discuss characterization. Next, the man with the big book goes to a part of the ship where the miser, mentioned by Roberts, lodges. In the ensuing conversation between the two characters, the man with a book talks the miser into investing a hundred dollars to be trebled, through a secret investment plan, only if the miser would have confidence. Taking the money, the man with a book leaves, without giving a receipt to the miser, not to be seen again. Thus, this character, though denying a relationship with earlier characters, follows in his action the pattern of the actions of earlier characters. By seeking the miser whom he hears of from the merchant, he suggests in the mind of the reader who has not yet turned suspicious, if such reader exist, that Ringman knew about the merchant from Guinea, and that he himself knew about the student and the merchant from Ringman. In addition his action gives suggestive evidence that all of these characters are mani­ festations of the same man. # « «■ The time is late morning when an old sick man is approached by a man in a snuff-colored surtant who turns out to be the herb-doctor who, besides being on Guinea’s list of characters, was described by the man with a book as a friend and was recommended to the miser. The herb-doctor urges the sick man to have confidence in an Omni-Balsamic Reinvigora- tor he is peddling. The old man, first surly, after an extended argument buys some doses of the medicine. The next product the herb-doctor peddles is a Samaritan Pain Dissuader which he tries to sell to an unenthusiastic crowd. When a backwoodsman with a little girl boards the boat, the herb-doctor approaches them but is repulsed by the backwoods' man. A sick young man buys a bottle from the herb-doctor and others follow suit. Here the woodsman shouts that some pains cannot be eased with medicine and then deals a heavy blow to the herb-doctor who soon departs. At this point, the narrator introduces two men who watched the previous scene and who now discuss the moral character of the herb-doctor. One of them asserts that the herb-doctor is a quack while the other describes him as a fool. The herb-doctor comes back and offers half his profits for charity, since, he claims, it is his policy to do so. When nobody comes to take the money, a criminal­ looking man claims it and the doctor leaves again. The two men who were discussing his character are hopelessly 81 deadlocked in their argument. A third man offers an opinion which serves only to make the character of the herb-doctor more enigmatic. The whole scene produces enough differing views that the reader who had formed a definite opinion about the herb-doctor will have to consider possible alter­ natives. The herb-doctor next meets a Thomas Fry, a cripple in regimental clothes. Fry is the one character who best fits Guinea's description of his witness "a ge’mman as is a sodjer." Yet he does not appear in the sequence Guinea's list suggests. His appearance at the same time with the herb-doctor poses a problem for scholars who argue that Guinea's list of witnesses is one that Melville intended to be a guide for the different manifestations or avatars of the same character, The Confidence-Man. Fry is as equivocal as the other characters with one difference» he goes out and "cons" some money in front of the eyes of the herb- doctor, No other character in the book cons another char­ acter out in the open and without any scruples. Fry explains that he was a witness to a crime and was put in jail as a witness. There he contracted a dis­ ease that turned him cripple while the murderer got away because he had influential friends. The herb-doctor, who adds to his talents the profession of a bone-setter, refuses to believe Fry's story. Here Fry goes out shouting that he was wounded in the Mexican Wars. Several people feel sorry 82

for him and give him contributions. When Fry comes back the herb-doctor lectures him on patriotism and good charity and gives him some medicine boxes for free. Fry, repentant, insists on paying, after which the two men part. Next, the herb-doctor meets the sick miser. The miser, recognizing the herb-doctor as one suggested by the man with the book, asks for help in locating the man who took his money. The herb-doctor identifies the man with a book as Mr. Truman of St. Louis. He agrees to go with the miser in search of Truman. The search ends when the herb- doctor shouts after a man he claims to be Truman who is dis­ embarking. The herb-doctor tries to abate the miser’s doubts about Truman and offers to sell the miser some medi­ cine to cure his cough. The miser buys some medicine boxes while the herb-doctor leaves to prepare to land. A Missouri bachelor in bear-skin and a raccoon-skin cap chides the miser for trusting that herbs can cure him. Nature, argues the bachelor, is treacherous. He repeats the argument for the herb-doctor who returns momentarily, on his way to disembarking. The bachelor says that the herb-doctor reminds him of the last boy of the many bad boys he had employed who were so bad that he resolved to buy a machine to replace them. He proclaims that he has confidence in distrust. The bachelor accuses the herb- doctor of using an abolitionist and a moderate man who "may be used for wrong but are useless for right." (p. 12?) The 83

herb-doctor’s landing, Cape Giradeau, is reached and he leaves. A man in a five-dollar suit and a brass plate indicat­ ing his affiliation with the Philosophical Intelligence Office approaches the bachelor. The PIO man is, of course, the man with a brass plate mentioned by Guinea. (He does not, how­ ever, appear in the order suggested by Guinea.) The PIO man argues with the bachelor on whether all boys are rascals. The bachelor, who calls himself Pitch, argues that boys are rascals. The PIO man with an analogical argument convinces Pitch that boys like lily buds and caterpillars will turn to something marvelous when they mature. When the man from the Intelligence Office mentions St. Augustine’s conversion from a rascal to a believer, Pitch softens and pays for a boy to be sent to him. The money paid, the man from the Intelli­ gence Office disembarks at Cairo. Pitch, his distrust returning to him, stands at the rail of the boat and starts wondering if he was duped. At this point, a stranger dressed colorfully and described by the narrator as a cosmopolitan, addresses Pitch with a "seraph-like” voice and tries to start a friendly conversa­ tion. Pitch calls the cosmopolitan a popinjay to which the latter responds by inviting Pitch to consider life as a picnic. When the Cosmopolitan remarks that even if one wants to be a misanthrope it is better to be like Diogenes rather than Timon, Pitch shakes the Cosmopolitan hard enough

BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 84 that the latter decides to leave. . * ■» * The point when the Cosmopolitan is introduced marks the middle of the book and a shift in the direction of the plot. No longer will the reader see a rapid succession of new characters to occupy the center of his attention. The Cosmopolitan stays on the scene for the rest of the book. Yet a series of three characters—Noble, Winsome, Egbert— approach him in the same manner Ringman, the man in a gray coat and white tie, Truman, the herb-doctor, and the man from PIO approach other characters. Easing the demand on the reader’s imagination to fill the gaps between incidents and to establish the relationships between the different characters, Melville offers new challenges and a new set of problems. Thus when the reader begins to feel a little pre dictability in the pattern of the appearance of characters, Melville changes the rule, and almost completely reverses the pattern. If the Cosmopolitan could fit the description of a gentleman with a violet robe that Guinea gave of one of his witnesses, the characters who approach the Cosmo­ politan are not mentioned by Guinea. Yet these characters behave in as suspicious a manner as the earlier characters. The reader’s imagination still has to make connections and bridge gaps and if it had settled on a specific method of understanding the action, it will have to make some adjust­ ment and become a little more unsure. 85

Charlie Noble approaches the Cosmopolitan and pro­ nounces Pitch a misanthrope who acts like Colonel Moredock, famous Indian-Hater. He then tells how he heard about the Colonel from his father’s friend James Hall. He tells the Cosmopolitan about the philosophy of Indian-hating and then recites the story of the Colonel as the Judge would recount it. Noble praises wine and tobacco and criticizes Shakes­ peare’s Polonius. The Cosmopolitan defends Pitch and Polonius but admits that he is unsettled and does not know how to read Polonius. He adds that he would like to put confidence in Noble. The secret the Cosmopolitan shares with Nobles is his urgent need of money. Noble is insulted and is ready to leave when the Cosmopolitan, in a theatrical manner circles Noble with money and assures him that the loan demanded is only a joke. Here Melville interrupts to explain that characters in a fiction should be like characters in a play. The Cosmopolitan then tells Noble the story of Charle- mont and Noble is quick to retire. The following character to approach the Cosmopolitan deprecates Noble in the same manner Noble deprecated Pitch. The Cosmopolitan responds to both attacks in the same fashion» he defends these characters by asserting that their appearance is not their reality. The new character is a mystical-looking man, Mark Winsome, whose speech is full of cryptic and ambiguous transcendental talk. He praises the 86

Cosmopolitan for his beautiful soul, apparently due to the Cosmopolitan's exotic clothes. When the Cosmopolitan asserts that beauty and goodness go hand in hand Winsome agrees in a muddled speech. Winsome refuses to drink any wine when he is offered it and says he prefers ice water. When a man passes, peddling a transcendental tract, the Cosmopolitan buys one? but not Winsome—who describes the peddler as a scoundrel. Egbert appears next. Winsome introduces him as a practical disciple whose actions put Winsome’s theory into operation. Egbert refuses to give the Cosmopolitan money under any circumstances. As an illustration of his prin­ ciples, Egbert recites the story of China Aster as he has heard it. China Aster’s friend Orchis wins a lottery and is prosperous. He forces a loan on China to improve his busi­ ness. China takes the money despite his better judgment and the advice of his friends. The years pass and when Orchis asks for the money, China cannot pay it back. China finally dies, and so his wife, from over-work and grief. China’s grave has inscribed on it "The root of all was a friendly loan." The story upsets the Cosmopolitan who thinks of it as directed to uproot his confidence. Egbert interprets it as only suggesting that no friend should put himself under the mercy of his friends. Aggrieved, the Cosmopolitan departs after giving Egbert a shilling to buy 87 some wood to warm his heart and that of his master’s. The Cosmopolitan is next seen coming into the barber’s shop where he asks for a shave. He receives one and departs after making the barber take his "No Trust" sign down and promise to trust all customers. As a proof of this trust, the barber reluctantly agrees to let the Cosmopolitan leave without paying for the shave. In return, the Cosmopolitan agrees, in writing, to pay the barber all his losses from the confidence policy. But after the Cosmopolitan leaves, the barber tears up the agreement and puts his old sign up. Melville digresses at this point to bemoan the scarcity of original characters. The Cosmopolitan, in the last scene of The Confidence- Man, is seen in the gentlemen’s cabin. Most of the pas­ sengers are asleep in their berths except for an old gentle­ man who is reading the Bible. The Cosmopolitan, whose curiosity is aroused by the passage the barber claimed was in the Bible urging people to distrust and doubt the good­ ness in those who sweetly speak, finds the passage in the Bible and shows it to the old man. The old man reassures the Cosmopolitan that he need not worry since the passage comes from the Apocrypha, which is therefore doubtful and not the absolute truth. A little boy enters and manipu­ lates the old man’s suspicions in order to sell him a door lock and a money detector. Holding his purchases in his hands, the old man agrees with the Cosmopolitan that 88 distrusting man is like distrusting God, the creator of man. Both agree to trust humanity and providence. The old man asks for a life preserver and the Cosmopolitan gives it to him and then courteously leads him in the dark to his room. * * * The temporal plot starts "suddenly" and ends abruptly. It begins at the sunrise which promises to illuminate every­ thing and finishes in the middle of the night where even the artificial light is extinguished so nothing can be seen. Seeing and not seeing, light and dark are the opposite extremes of "gray" that the reader sees in the novel* "gray"—not as a solid, distinguished, fast color but rather as the mixture of opposing qualities. The reader has to determine the essential questions and their answers. With a series of episodes strung together with no strong apparent reason to connect them, the reader is left on his own with the task of construing a relationship. But the reader is not left confronted with completely undecipherable situations and episodes» at least they do not seem impossible to understand. In fact, it seems that Mel­ ville gives as many helpful clues as he thinks true to the reality he observes. This reality is something he cannot simplify, nor does he desire to. Placing a plan on reality would be to simplify it and possibly falsify it. Melville says as much when he discusses characterization in Chapter Fourteen. 89 For all practical reasons, Melville rejects completely the idea that a novelist could provide a true delineation of life that, functioning as a map, would provide the reader with an accurate and clear path to follow in life. Mark Win­ some claims that his philosophy would provide such a way for any man who follows it. Yet Melville makes it very clear that Winsome's philosophy is not viable, for it reduces man to an icicle-like non-human. In "real life" one knows people from what he sees them do and from what he hears from them and about them. While simply observing a character, one can only guess about his actions and relations. And Melville provides characters who function in a similar way. The actions in which these characters involve themselves are like actions of "real” people. The situations in which these characters are found, resemble real life situations. In the novel such situa­ tions stand out as suspicious while in real life they are diffused by the bombardment of continuous experience? as a result, a person cannot afford them the scrutiny he pays to the situations in the novel. The concentration is what makes the novel primarily art. But it is not only the process of selectivity that distinguishes the situations in The Confidence-Man from the situations in life. In the novel, the characters in their encounters lack a "third dimension" and seem to be "flat characters" whose actions are perfunctory and puppet-like. 90 In their actions the characters seem to be doing what they do because of "something" that moves or manipulates them from behind a curtain behind which we never get a glimpse. This is true because these actions seem to lack motives; at least the reader has no knowledge of motives and thus the reader has to supply motives from his own personal experi­ ence that fit the situation. This adds to the perfunctory puppet-like quality that these actions seem to possess. However, the reader cannot but remain unsure about the motives he supplied because of the inconsistency the inci­ dents reveal. But the discussion is progressing into an area that would be more profitably discussed under the spatial plot aspect of The Confidence-Man, the concerns with the manner in which characters sire grouped together. It can be thought of as "static in time and extended in space"? and in analyz­ ing it we examine the characters for insights from the par­ ticular places they occupy in the composition and from the way they are juxtaposed. Melville’s spatial plot is not designed to demonstrate a theme or provide a logical explana^ tion of a problem. If he wanted to do this, Melville would have planned his range and balanced his characters in such a way that he would have presented a close-locked group of characters. Melville employs a different kind of design. He created characters widely differing as individuals who are placed and arranged so that the reader’s imagination is 91 provoked to supply background and intermediate figures or emotions that would complete a complex picture and present, or at least evoke, the depth and breadth of humanity. This is accomplished because each character in such a spatial structure is an independent figure set at a distance from each of the others. Yet almost endless patterns of linkage of the one to several others suggest themselves. The lines tha1 t link several figures pass through so many who are not present in the work. The impression that a reader receives from such a structure is one of a world and a life in which everyone is an individual and not essentially a part of a thematic structure, yet not so individual as to be thought of in isolation. Of course many scholars have argued that Melville presents a close-locked group of characters—many argue of one character—in Black Guinea, Ringman, the man in gray coat and white tie, Truman, the Herb-doctor, the Philo­ sophical Intelligence Office representative and Frank Good­ man. Each of the characters in the group is suspected of being a con-man playing on other characters’ confidence, trust and charity. The subtitle of the book, "His Masquerade" suggests that there is one confidence-man. And as the dis­ cussion above indicates, there are clues to make the reader suspicious of a possible link between all these characters. Yet the existing linkage lines extend between a variety of other characters. In fact the other linkage-lines invalidate 92 the positive attitude critics take about the con-man as one character or the different characters named as "avatars" of the con-man. 8 Of the other lines of linkage between char­ acters who are not part of the usual list, the most convinc­ ing line of relationship is the one between Charlie Noble and Egbert. There are several similarities between Noble and Egbert of the same sort that link earlier confidence men together. Though Noble leaves, not to come back, there is evidence that he does return in another guise, Egbert. Egbert’s appearance is of a kind, Melville tells us, that is hard to interpret. His countenance is of the "neuter sort," neither disagreeable nor pleasing "so that it seemed quite uncertain how he would turn out." Like the parodic description of Noble, Melville’s caricature of Egbert, though it tends to be mocking, is equivocal. Melville clearly hints that Egbert is a New Englander. This makes Egbert's appearance at this point of the narrative a reminder of the pattern "con-men" follow in their appear­ ance» each is mentioned by an earlier "con-man." One remembers that Noble argued against New Englanders as com­ mercial and thrifty, while the Cosmopolitan defended them as good people. Earlier Pitch complained of the rascality of boys to the Herb-doctor only next to see an employment agency man, the representative from the Philosophical Intelligence Office, offer to hire him a boy. 93 If Noble appears as a puppet while expounding Judge James Hall's philosophy of Indian-hating, Egbert is a disciple of Mark Winsome and a puppet of his philosophy. The Cosmopolitan keeps remarking that Winsome is a ventrilo­ quist talking through Egbert. If Noble looks like someone who made his own fortune, Egbert looks commercial and like someone who would turn even mysticism into financial gain. There are other striking similarities. Neither Egbert nor Noble drinks any wine. Noble pretends that he is drinking and is forced, because of his pretension, to take a sip of wine which seems to affect him. Aware of Noble’s reluctance to drink, the Cosmopolitan keeps hinting of the support rascals give to temperance movements because of their evil natures. Egbert, like his master Winsome, does not drink wine, and since emulation of his master’s ideas is complete, one can safely assume that Egbert prefers ice cold water. The master's reason for not drinking is an exaggeration of his love for wine. Noble’s exaggeration makes him wish and claim that he would plant a Catawba vine on his grave. Winsome argues that his regard for wine is so extreme he would not drink it in order to keep his "love for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction." Both Noble and Egbert use standard English throughout their dialogues except in one instance. Both use "Ain’t he" in similar situations: when they are trying to be on cordial relations with the Cosmopolitan by making a flattering 94

statement and ending it rhetorically with the question. Egbert tells the story of China Aster to illustrate his argument against lending money to the Cosmopolitan. But before he tells it, he gives the same argument Noble gave before he recited Colonel Moredock’s story* "The original story teller here has tyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat his incidents without sliding into his style." Thus Egbert suggests strongly that, like Noble, he is an actor. One notices, also, that they share a familiarity with Shakespeare. Winsome says Egbert is his poet and disciple. He clarifies this statement by saying his poet is one who "acts" and uses thought. It seems the Cosmopolitan suspects Egbert to be related somehow to Noble. When he and Egbert arrange to pretend they are friends and to control a little scene in which Egbert may illustrate Winsome’s theory, the Cosmo­ politan chooses for Egbert the name "Charlie," the name with which he addressed Noble. Whether Noble and Egbert are the same man or avatars of the Confidence-man is ultimately impossible to establish with certainty. Yet the similarity between their approaches to the Cosmopolitan, and the many similarities between their relationship to each other and the relationship of other earlier confidence-men to each other suggests that they are possibly avatars of the confidence-man. Thus, the restric­ tion of the list of avatars to the eight characters, the 95

Mute, Black Guinea, John Ringman, the man in the gray coat and white tie, John Truman, the Herb-doctor, the man with the brass plate, and the Cosmopolitan, is not accurate. This is especially true when one realizes that Egbert and Noble are assumed by certain writers to be an avatar of the Confidence-Man. The restriction is impossible since it would have the Confidence-Man appearing in different oppos­ ing shapes simultaneously. The possible link between Noble and Egbert is not the only one. There are enough clues to suggest a link between Pitch and Noble. Pitch comes to know the Cosmopoli­ tan’s main occupying thought. Pitch also knows the Cosmo­ politan’s proclaimed philanthropy, his trust and most import ant, his love for wine and his belief that wine cures ill­ nesses. Pitch even accuses the Cosmopolitan of belonging to a society of vinters which hired him to lecture on the good effects of wine. Noble, true to the pattern of Confidence- men, preaches trust and confidence, claims he is a lover of mankind and tries to capitalize on a deep professed love of wine. He shows a knowledge of backwoodsmen through his recitation of the story of Colonel Moredock—in essence a knowledge of Pitch's background which is similar but not as extreme in its misanthropy as the depiction of Moredock. Pitch's clothes are described as a "costume" of bear and raccoon which seems rather interesting in light of the fact that Noble is an actor. Moreover, Noble uses the same 96 argument and a similar phrase as that used earlier by Pitch. Pitch argues with the Herb-doctor about confidence. Pitch concludes that the old sick miser lived beyond his years and is a fool. Noble gives the same argument against Polonius» that it is too dangerous to linger on the scene of life. When Pitch finds that he is losing his argument to the repre^ sentative of the P.I.O. he becomes emotional and affirms to himself "My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say." Noble, in similar circumstances, resorts to the same tactic. Rather emotional at losing ground in the argument to the Cosmopolitan, yet trying to be unantagonistic, Noble says, "that may be, or may not be, but I stick to what I said." Pitch uses an argument employed later by Egbert. He tells the Herb-doctor that the moderate man may be used for wrong but is not useful for right. With some modification, Egbert uses the same logic to deny giving a loan or alms to the Cosmopolitan. Also, there is a similarity between Win­ some’s argument concerning rattle-snakes, which amounts to a belief in the issuance of good from evil, and the Herb- doctor’s similar view in his encounter with Thomas Fry. Both instances are parodic of Emerson’s doctrine of com­ pensation. Thus the lines that link characters together cannot be reduced to one line, nor are they limited in number to be enumerated. The novel presents a complicated world and it suggests and evokes all the intricacies of life. 97 FOOTNOTES

■^A Handbook to Literature (Indianapolis, 1972), p. 397. 2Ibid.. p. 236. ^Recent studies, however, take different attitudes and see structural patterns that are not chaotic. In The Wake of the Gods* Melville’s Mythology (Stanford, 1963)» p. 18?, Bruce Franklin finds that Melville "made the shape shifting of Vishnu and Siva into the Centura! structural fact of The Confidence-Man." In Melville's Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth (Baltimore, 19&S), p. 162, Edgar A. Dryden suggests that the book has a Biblical struc­ ture for it spans, temporally, from Christ to the Apocalypse. Richard Chase in "Melville's Confidence-Man," The Kenyon Review, 11 (Winter, 1949), P. 135» affirms that the book is unified, although episodic, by the themes and the dialecti­ cal development of ideas. 4 Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation," Against Interpretation (New York, 1966), p. 18. -4Jna Ellis Ferraor in Shakespeare the Dramatist, Ed. Kenneth Muir (New York, 1961), discus'ses in Chapter Five the temporal and spatial aspects of plot. This study is greatly indebted to Professor Fermor's ideas concerning plot. The debt goes deeper than what can be acknowledged in a note. 6Ibid., p. 95.

7Ibid.. p. 79. O There are various points of view from which the who and what questions concerning The Confidence-Man are answered. The following opinions are samples from among many others» Bruce Franklin argues that "The Confidence- Man appears God to the readers and not to the characters . . . . Christ and Satan are the shape-shifting joker known as the Confidence Man." (p. 177) Later, in the introduction to his edition of Melville's book (Indianapo­ lis, 1967), P. xxvi, Franklin describes the con man as the sun, a god, a savior, and at the same time the darkness that obscures» "This identity of light and darkness, sal­ vation and destruction, inherently alien to Christianity, lies at the heart of both Hinduism and Buddhism.” Joseph Bairn's "The Confidence-Man as 'Trickster,'" American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 1 (First Quarter, 1969), 8I-83, views the con man as the archetypal figure in the Jungian sense of the term. He finds that the con man 98

functions ambiguously, that he is faceless, a stranger, and a foreigner. He is not trapped in a static sense of iden­ tity. Rather, the con man is one with the dynamism of the cosmos. He distinguishes between good and evil yet he knows that the life-spirit is contained in the tension between per fectly figured contraries. Baim concludes that Melville's trickster "emerges as a teacher, even, indeed, a savior. Every Savior is a trickster. His ultimate trick is salva­ tion." In Herman Melville» A Critical Study (New York, 1949), pp. 187-188, Richard Chase describes the con man as an elusive figure with "a portmanteau character." At the center of the figure is the Yankee peddlar with other com­ ponents from Brother Jonathan, Uncle Sam, Orpheus and Christ Taken together they embody virtues which would ensure the success of the American venture. This is implied by having the opposite characteristics of these figures attributed to the con man. Most important, Chase adds, the con man's features never become those of a human being. John W. Shroeder in "Sources and Symbols for Melville's Confidence- Man, "The Confidence-Man» His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), p. 305, recognizes that it is never easy to identify the con man for he is a shape-shifter He finds the Negro related to the con man and so his list is not to be trusted. But Shroeder is certain that the con man is the Devil and cites many passages that show Melville pushing to the limits Milton's suggestion that the Devil and his legions assume the form of the reptile at one time or another. In "The Confidence-Man and Christian Deity; Mel­ ville's Imagery of Ambiguity," Explorations of Literature, Louisiana State University Studies, 18 (196677 PP« 84, 86-87. Malcolm 0. Magaw argues that the con man embodies a good image which is ordered by a motif of a mask of symbolic colors and shades. It seems to Magaw that "it is man who imputes benevolence or malevolence to the Confidence-Man" who is "a God whose many-colored masks are the fantastic projections of the minds of those men who unconsciously turn to dreams and illusions to give themselves identity." Charles Feidelson, Jr. in Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago, 1969), p. 210, argues that the con man is the Devil who has the function of unsettling and forcing the issues and thus indirectly suggesting answers. In "Melville and the Manichean Illusion," Texas Studies in Literature, 4 (Spring, 1962), pp. 124-125, J. C. Oates finds the con man can be understood only as the embodiment of an idea. He is human and finite but not human like Milton's Satan who recognizes a belief the con man is not prepared to recognize. The con man's education progresses according to the com­ plexity of the people he meets. CHAPTER IV

RHYTHM AND MODE

With a plot of the nature described in the previous chapter and a group of characters who seem equivocal, The Confidence-Man must contain some other unifying element than plot oi* character. It has been easy for scholars to overlook the book as art and to discuss it as discourse of facts and opinions. Hence, it is never too often repeated that the style by which things are stated is all-important. The reader interprets literature by trying to decide what the writer is stating and how well he says it but not by attempting to explain what the writer is trying to say as if he is incapable of handling his words. Usually a work of art achieves its unity through its basic rhythm. Such is the case of The Confidence-Man. "Rhythm" in the sense used in this paper does not indicate a manner of equal division of incidents or time but, rather, a relation between tensions. In general, the basis of rhythm is the preparation of a new incident or event by the end of a preceding one. Physiologically, breathing is the perfect example of rhythm. Susanne K. Langer's discussion of rhythm in art, one of the best to be found anywhere, describes it as "the setting-up of new tensions by the reso­ lution of former ones."I Since Langer holds that art has the character of life—the functioning of organism—she finds 100 it reasonable to discuss the "fundamental rhythm" of art. 2 Langer posits two fundamental rhythms, tragic and comic. She finds these two rhythms through—and because of— her symbolic concept of art. She asserts that art "abstracts from reality the fundamental forms of consciousness« the reflection of natural activity in sensation, awareness, and expectation, which belongs to all higher creatures and might be called, therefore, the pure sense of life« and beyond that, the reflection of an activity which is at once more elaborate, and more integrated, having a beginning, efflorescence, and end—the personal sense of life, or self-realization."7 The tragic rhythm pictures life as a voyage of a single span from birth to death. Thus youth, maturity and age are different stages in the fulfillment of a destiny and are successive stages of self-realization. A man’s many challenges are ways to fulfill his individual destiny. Langer affirms that the tragic rhythm is ”, . . the rhythm of a man's life at its highest powers in the limits of his unique, death-bound career."^ In its broad line, the tragic rhythm is the pattern of life as it grows, prospers and declines. Its underlying feeling is what Langer calls the personal sense of life. The Confidence-Man does not have a tragic matrix or vision. In it there is no interest to see life as a voyage or as a single span. There is no interest exhibited in the 101 delineation of characters, self-realization or self-consum­ mation. Melville’s concern is with the relation of man to his fellowman and his reactions to life and adaptations to it. These concerns seem to be those of the comic rhythm. Langer asserts "The pure sense of life is the under­ lying feeling of comedy, developed in countless different ways.It presents man in conflict with the universe to maintain his organic unity—in a delightful encounter because of man's temporary triumphs. The comic rhythm pre­ sents the image of livingness. It presents and celebrates life itself. Man is not involved in self-realization but in self-preservation. He reacts and adapts to the universe. Thus comedy flourishes whenever people gather to celebrate life: in triumphs, birthdays, weddings and spring festivals. It always ‘implies a new future after its end and not an inevitable conclusion. In its essence comedy is full of a human life-feeling. Melville refers to his book at the end of Chapter Fourteen as "our comedy" and suggests at the same time that it is a comedy of both thought and action. Several scholars have taken the hint and assert that the book is a comedy. Edgar A. Dryden calls it Melville's comedy and so does Richard Chase, who claims that it is "a kind of non-dramatic comedy that sometimes reminds us of Moliere and Ben Jonson." R. W. B. Lewis calls it a novel with a mask of comedy. Yet he adds that Melville’s book is ". . . the start of a 102 distinctive new genre, its first and still its most remark- 7 able example." Lewis seems to have sensed that though the novel has overall lines of comedy yet it has something dif­ ferent besides comedy; but he does not elaborate the point. The Confidence-Man presents an image of life and livingness. It presents characters interacting, condition­ ing and conditioned who are involved in action which involves the disturbing of the equilibrium of their lives but does not present the restoration of this equilibrium. It pre­ sents the characters' duels with the world but the reader does not know the outcome of these contests. Yet the restora tion of equilibrium or the temporary triumph of the pro­ tagonists are essential to a comic rhythm. Thus it is not totally appropriate to describe the book’s rhythm as "comic." Both the tragic and the comic visions of life depend on the contradictions of life; they both emerge from the tension that exists between man's aspirations that are ideal, lofty, even reasonable, and the imperfect, dull or dis­ appointing actual existence. Both tragedy and comedy con­ tain, sometimes implicitly, an expression of man's idea of what is good. This expression can, sometimes, take the route of satire to express what is good by pointing out what is not good, Comedy and satire share the tactic of exposing vanity and other foibles of men. The Confidence- Man does expose many of the shortcomings of the different 103

philosophies of man, a fact that prompted many scholars to consider the book a satire of transcendentalism and of relig- o ion. But satire, through laughter and invective, tries to cure folly and punish evil. Whether satire takes the shape of invective, lampoon, farce or comedy, it remains propa­ ganda by means of distortion. Essentially, satire asserts the validity of norms and systematic values and meanings that are present in recognizable codes. Besides this, satire makes the contrast between good and evil clearly dis­ tinct. In The Confidence-Man, obviously, such contrast is not clear nor are there completely valid norms and values. Many critics have found parody in Melville's book. 9 In fact this study mentioned several of these parodic instances. Of course, parody is satire that takes the form of an imitation which, through distortion and exaggeration, evokes amusement, derision and, sometimes, scorn. In its formal and material forms, parody functions, as satire does, in asserting recognizable ethical codes. No such codes appear in the parodic instances cited in The Confi­ dence-Man. The rhythm of the book has a parody-like quality of action. But the book is not parody though it contains some parodic aspects; nor is its rhythm purely comic, as defined by Langer. Because the book’s rhythm is neither tragic nor comic, there is a need for a new term to describe the book’s rhythm. 104 The most appropriate term seems to be "High Parody." This term is used as a descriptive term. "High" functions here not as a qualitative or a valuative attribute but as a diagrammatic one. It is used to distinguish "high parody" from formal and material parody. It is possible to describe the rhythm as an incomplete comic rhythm, for the comic: rhythm seems to dominate the book. However, side by side goes along with the comic rhythm element, a rhythm of irre­ solution in a contrapuntal manner that makes it impossible to call the rhythm, comic. Before studying and interpreting the rhythm of The % Confidence-Man as a form of "high parody," a short discus­ sion of the action of the book is in order. The concept of action cannot be defined abstractly but since it is an analogical concept it can be understood in reference to specific actions. The word is used by Francis Fergusson to refer to the analogies the writer makes to his repeti­ tions of the whole in the parts.In The Confidence-Man the action--using Fergusson’s definition—can be described as follows: to trust or distrust is the question. This action holds true in character and plot. It holds true for the book’s rhythmical units. The first unit in the book establishes the action and "begins" the rhythmic pattern for the entire book. The word "begins” could be misleading if taken to suggest a definiteness or certainty of a moral point of departure. 105 The suddenness of the beginning, in addition to the fact that it is April Fool’s Day, should eradicate any such definite­ ness. This first unit presents the action of the book in its most outward and broad lines. Charity is one way of dealing with the universe. This is explicitly urged by the mute in what he writes on a slate: "Charity thinketh no evil," "Charity suffereth long, and is kind," "Charity believeth all things," and "Charity never faileth." (pp. 2- 3) On the other side, the barber's sign "No Trust," and a placard next to the captain's office warning of a mysterious imposter both counter the charity message. Charity and dis­ trust are pitted against each other explicitly and implicitly. The mute is made suspicious by the similarity between him and the advertized imposter, yet his lamb-like appearance and action suggest his innocence. This innocence and its suggestion of trust in everything leaves the barber's gaudy "No Trust" sign only a pasteboard placard with no meaning to it. Yet there are peddlars, who seem not to be trust­ worthy, roaming about the boat seeking money in any way pos­ sible. This first scene resembles the dumb-shows that pre­ ceded Elizabethan plays and functioned to show the basic action of these plays.This is the case with the first chapter. The second chapter's title, "Showing That Many Men Have Many Minds," is extremely appropriate to the action shown. For it is impossible to have conclusive evidence on 106 how to read the mute, nor are there enough clues to know which behavior Melville suggests to the reader. In fact the title of the second chapter suggests that there are many ways to adapt to the question of how to behave in life. In the Fidele’s microcosm, men have different minds and opin­ ions. The following scenes and units of the book present characters who are like the strange particles in the strange waters overflowing through the fountain of "Rio Janeiro," Melville’s image of the boat. The fountain represents the same question about and to all the strangers» how is one to undertake the task of living; is one to trust or to dis­ trust? The first unit, Chapters One and Two, poses the ques­ tion mainly in its abstract statement. The mute does not reappear and remains forever an enigma. The reader, even the least attentive reader, will expect an answer to the question posed later in the novel. But the second unit— Chapter Three—presents what is in essence a "parody" of the first scene. The question of trust and distrust is reintroduced in the form of an application. The look of innocence, moral earnestness and pure whiteness that the side of trust assumed in the first unit is represented in the "game of charity" by the crippled black man. Charity takes an animalistic and primitive form, for charity becomes sustenance given to Black Guinea who is reduced to the existence of an animal. The distrust side is presented 10? by a misanthropic, "sour-faced" wooden-legged man who wants to inflict his own suffering and doubt on humanity. Both sides are reduced in stature physically and morally. Char­ ity and the denial of it are represented by few pennies given or taken. Religious charity is solicited by a Metho­ dist and an Episcopalian, but the wooden-legged man counters with an argument that suggests Christ in his charity was a fool. When a country merchant gives confidence and money to the Negro, he seems to have other reasons for donating besides charity. He emphasizes the personal pronoun and makes the "charitable person" more important than the act. On the other hand, the object of charity, Black Guinea, becomes an object of suspicion towards the end of the scene. This second unit does not offer an acceptable solu­ tion to the immediate question. Instead, by completing this unfinished unit, the following scene begins a new unit that is open-ended, resembling the first unit in structure. In fact, the one puzzling aspect of the second unit gives the necessary element for the beginning of the following unit in the form of the business card covered by the Negro’s stump. The card is mentioned in the following scene as evi­ dence of the merchant’s identity. The presence of the mer­ chant in this unit gives a sense of continuity. The same technique of repetition is used in all the following scenes. In any one scene at least one character would have appeared previously in an earlier scene. In this new unit—Chapters 108 Four and Five—charity is requested on the basis of past knowledge. Ringman, whose present look is respectable enough though financially impoverished, asks for alms from Mr. Roberts for the sake of a past acquaintance. He obtains some help from the gingerly merchant and gives, in return, a tip on the stock of a coal company: "From the stock’s descent its rise will be higher than from no fall." (p. 24) This analogy to the Felix Culpa doctrine is obviously paro­ dic, yet it is uttered in complete seriousness and is obvi­ ously the religious element in the unit. The encounter is a variation of Black Guinea’s encounter with the penny­ pitching doubtful crowd. The physical calamity of the Negro is replaced with the material poverty and the mourning of Ringman. The doubting crowd is superseded by Mr. Roberts who is skeptically charitable, and with the student who meets Ringman next. The student, especially because of the Tacitus book he reads, is silently and awkwardly suspicious of Ringman. The knowledge of the past represented in the books Ringman discusses is presented as capable of inducing trust or distrust. But neither trust nor distrust is given more weight than the other. The question remains the important feature. In the following unit charity is organized and pre­ sented as business. The Seminole widows, the objects of charity, are not on the scene but they have a representa­ tive v/ho tries to collect contributions for them. Charity 109 gains an abstract quality. Both the refusals of a rich man and an old man to contribute are founded on their associa­ tions of charity to begging. On the other hand, the Epis- I copalian clergyman and a charitable lady contribute because both want to fight distrust in themselves. The representa­ tive of the Asylum gets a large contribution from the man with gold sleeve buttons whose smug, luxurious charity is an observant, hands-off, cool one, that, money paid, is self congratulatory. Charity as business fascinates the man with gold sleeve buttons and so does the cure-all Protean easy- chair. Wall Street spirit and principles applied to organ­ ized retail charity are enthusiastically presented as cap­ able of revolutionizing all the present ways to transform the world into a heaven. The financial optimism proclaims that what is successful in business could work as well in spiritual and physical-health matters. Stretched too far though they may seem, yet the claims of the man with a gray coat strikes a responsive note in the man with gold sleeve buttons. Are we to trust or distrust organized charity— religion? Is the man in gray an enthusiast or a charlatan? He elicits trust and charity--receives it from three differ­ ent characters, and fails to get it from another three. The next unit—Chapters Nine to Fifteen—incorporates variations and some reversal of ideas on the preceding unit that achieve the effect of parody. The president and repre­ sentative of the Black Rapids Coal Company is sought by the no

student and the merchant to sell stock. He meets two other characters, an old man who refuses to socialize with him, while a miser trusts in him. In the majority of these encounters, instead of applying business principles to char­ ity, charitable, Christian and metaphysical principles are applied to business. The student tries to be cautious by buying one kind of stock while refusing to buy the other. But his decision is not based on solid facts. The miser's blind belief that he could triple his money if he puts trust in the man with a book, leads him to invest a large sum. The merchant offers the best arguments for investing complete trust in business. On the other hand, he relates a story of an unfortunate man to illustrate that distrust is necessary in this world. But his story has the tinge of an exaggera­ tion that borders on the fantastic. The merchant, influ­ enced by wine, adds an exclamation of distrust only to apolo­ gize for it when sober. The result of all these encounters is an emphasis of the question: should one have trust, blind or cautious, or should he have distrust in his every­ day business activities? The subsequent unit—Chapters Sixteen to Twenty-One— follows the same pattern of the preceding units containing variations on the unit preceding. The principles of Chris­ tian and metaphysical trust are applied to Nature. The Herb-doctor suggests to several characters that certain herbs contain the secrets of Nature and are able to deliver Ill and restore health. Organic Nature is professed to have in it metaphysical and transcendental powers for good. Nature, which here is used to designate the physical world in general, is made the object of trust and distrust. An old sick man is prevailed on to buy some herbs and to have a doubtful trust in Nature. A Titan, with what seems to be a misan­ thropic and pessimistic outlook, refuses to grant any trust. A soldier of fortune, begging for money under different false excuses because of his distrust in humanity, is prevailed on to try and put trust in herbs. The sick miser is also induced to buy some herbs when he is offered a bargain. Only Pitch refuses to put any trust in Nature and points out what he calls the evil consequences of such trust. The emerging movement in the unit emphasizes the different pos­ sible answers to the question of trust and distrust in Nature and the universe. The next unit—Chapters Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three— shifts the emphasis to focus on man. It also questions the new scientific methods. Instead of the transcendent way of knowledge proposed earlier, the new method is analytical. Yet, parodistically, it resorts to metaphysics for analogi­ cal proof. Instead of studying Nature in general, it studies Man as Representative. Pitch proposes that experi­ ence teaches distrust in Man. The representative of the Philosophical Intelligence Office counters by arguing that analytical studies show that man is inherently good. Pitch 112 is persuaded to put some confidence in humanity, but soon is doubtful of man and scornful of his lapse of misanthropy. Once again the main issue remains a familiar one: trust or mistrust? The second half of the book can be regarded as one large unit or as a series of units recapitulating all the previous units mentioned. The scene involving Pitch and Frank Goodman in essence amplifies the previous unit of trust in Man. Pitch affirms his seeming misanthropy. The scene serves to give the impression of continuity to a pat­ tern that persisted throughout the first half of the book but which is changed at least in one aspect. In the three following scenes, all the characters preach confidence and trust, though of a different sort. Goodman and Noble agree that confidence is the foremost virtue they uphold. Yet Noble recounts the story of an Indian-hater and Goodman tells the story of Charlemont, both stories of men of dis­ trust. Confidence is enunciated by both Noble and Goodman yet in action both seem to have misanthropic qualities. In the following two scenes, confidence, charity and trust are preached and agreed upon by Goodman, Mark Winsome and Egbert. Yet the charity of Winsome is immedi­ ately questioned through his rejection of a transcendental tract seller. Egbert behaves the same way his master behaved. Charity and trust to him are ideal states that could never be applied to actual cases. Trust seems to be 113

his motto while distrust is his model of action. Neither Winsome nor Egbert lose or give any money. The question of whether to trust or distrust gains poignancy through them. On the other hand, Goodman’s demand of trust is on the immediate, down-to-earth level. He elicits sympathy for his demand yet he does not need the charity he requests. His reasons for demanding trust are suspicious. Goodman’s encounter with the barber throws no new light on the question. In fact the meeting picks up the original dichotomy between the barber’s sign and the.mute's maxims of charity. The meeting gives the impression of an intellectual pursuit for a satisfying answer that began in one direction of a circle only to come back to where it began. Then when Goodman and the old gentleman discuss whether there is ground for distrust.in the Bible there is only an apocryphal answer. The search for a satisfying answer is not finished. The question is serious and will have to be pursued. But it has been posed repeatedly and on different levels and different subjects without gaining a satisfactory answer. Some answer will have to be pro­ vided by the reader. Because of this unusual rhythm it is not surprising to find lack of agreement among critics on the meaning of the book as a unit. So much is left to the reader that this book, more than any other Melville wrote, demands com­ plete involvement from every reader. Thus the reader brings 114 his own convictions, beliefs and prejudices when he inter­ prets the book. Melville manages to turn the whole narra­ tive into something that resembles the doubloon Ahab nails on the mast in Moby Dick. The different interpretations— which are essentially answers given to the question posed by the main action of the book—are not, however, provided in the text itself, as is the case in Moby Dick. Instead, Melville converts The Confidence-Man into a questioning description of the ultimate doubloon: the cosmos. 12 Of course, on the literal level, The Confidence-Man is a novel about western life in the eighteen-fifties. It describes a variety of characters. Yet the reader who peruses the book, in any fashion that goes beyond the escape literature attitude, will find the world of the book amoebic. There are no constants or certainties within. It presents a real world yet paradoxically is no more real than the fictitious world of the several tales told by characters within the book. In fact these tales are obvi­ ous attempts by their tellers to put certainty into their world, to invest it with an understandable meaning and thus ease its inherent tensions. Yet these tales serve to give the opposite impression. The tales are of a certain kind that give an impression far from reality. The tales of Goneril, Charlemont, Colonel John Moredock and China Aster are similar to the Western tall tales.Explained on the metaphorical and symbolical level, The Confidence-Man is 115 an attempt to portray the cosmos as it really is: bewilder­ ing. The bewilderment is expressed through characterization, plot and rhythm. For Melville neither the tragic nor the comic vision of the world is satisfactory. He is not ready to accept the universe through any of the available philosophies, for none are comprehensive. Nor is he ready to dismiss and reject the cosmos by way of pessimistic and nihilistic philosophies, for his humanism cannot accept that. Yet he cannot remain silent. He has to continue probing for an answer to the question. The universe is a riddle that he feels he has to solve. His search leads him through differ­ ent levels of existence and through all the possible ways that his conceptual order can scan. But he does not light on a way to deal with the universe to neutralize the ten­ sion created by the two great alternatives: trust and dis­ trust. Someone else might have left this query alone with­ out resolving all its contradictions. But not Melville. If he cannot find a satisfying answer he at least can pose the question. This he does in as many ways as possible. His method is one of a non-acceptance—which is not the same as a refusal. He tries to present a total, comprehen­ sive picture of the universe that puts everything in per­ spective and in focus; to place things in thé order where they would produce the most tension, for he was bewildered and engrossed with tensions in the universe between dark 116 and light, charity and misanthropy, trust and distrust. Several critics have pointed out the experimental quality of The Confidence-Man. This experimental attitude is evident in Melville's theory of fiction as well as in his practice. Melville's method seems to be different not only from that of other contemporary writers but also from everything Melville wrote before and after The Confidence- Man. However, Melville was preparing for this experiment by a constant examination in the art of fiction. The theory he expounds in the three chapters on the art of fiction in The Confidence-Man^^ are not new pronouncements for Melville,

for he did take the same position in at least two other occa­ sions: his review, "Hawthorne And His Mosses," and Pierre. In 1850 Melville wrote "Hawthorne and His Mosses," in which he praised Hawthorne's power in Mosses from An Old Manse. Besides urging an esteem for Hawthorne and American writers, Melville talks about the "Art of Telling the Truth." He asserts in more than one place that truth can only be captured and known intuitively. His best example is Shakes­ peare, whose way of getting at truth Melville describes as through "occasional flas.hings-forth" and "short, quick prob­ ings at the very axis of reality." Melville adds that "in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands» and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth—even though it be 117 covertly and by snatches."^

In Pierre, Melville discusses his art while discuss­ ing Pierre’s art. In Book Seven, Melville points out the major problem of the novels Pierre has read, "their false, inverted attempts at systematizing eternally unsystemizable elements; their audacious, intermeddling impotency, in try­ ing to unravel, and spread out, and classify, the more thin than gossamer threads which make up the complex web of 17 life." 1 The foolishness of the novelists who try to make life clear is evident when Pierre "saw that human life doth truly come from that, which all men agreed to call by the name of God; and that it partakes of the unravelable inscrutableness of God." Melville adds that life is not necessarily consistent, that human mysteries are not always solved and that if a novelist presents life differently he is untruthful: By infallible presentiment he saw, that not always doth life’s beginning gloom conclude in gladness; that wedding-bells peal not ever in the last scene of life’s fifth act; that while the countless tribes of common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up at last; and while the countless tribes of common dramas do but repeat the same; yet the profounder emanations of the human mind, intended to illustrate all that can be humanly known of human life; these never unravel their own intrica­ cies, and have no proper endings; but in imperfect, unanticipated, and disappointed sequels (as mutilated stumps), hurry to abrupt intermergings with the eternal tides of time and fate.18 In another section of Pierre, Melville proclaims two points; that there are no original characters in the 118 universe, and that the writer needs the experiences of the world to be able to write. The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself—who according to the Rabbins was also the first author— not being an original; the only original author being God. Had Milton’s been the lot of Casper Hauser, Milton would have been vacant as he. For though the naked soul of man doth assuredly contain one latent element of intellectual productiveness, yet never was there a child born solely from one parent; the visible world of experience being that procreative thing which impregnates the muses; self-reciprocally efficient hermaphrodites being but a fable.19 Most of these pronouncements are repeated in The Confidence-Man. Some of them have been mentioned earlier in the chapter on characterizations nature is inconsistent in its products; human nature is past finding out; charac­ ters in fiction should be true to life yet should not dress, talk or behave like people in real life; there are no original characters in fiction since these illuminate every­ thing around them like prophets do. But there are other statements equally important. Melville asserts that human nature is complex, and a novel cannot serve as a map to lead a young man to the right conduct in life; rather, it shows truth through intui­ tions and indirections. Shakespeare, cited in Melville's essay on Hawthorne, is used again as an example in The Confidence-Man in the scene between the Cosmopolitan and Noble. "This Shakespeare is a queer man. At times seeming irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There 119

appears to be a certain—what shall I call it?—hidden sun, say, about him, at once enlightening and mystifying." (p. 194) Melville professes that a novelist picks up his materials through his experiences in life, for "Every great town is a kind of manshow, where the novelist goes for his stock." (p. 270) Melville also repeats another idea he pre­ sented earlier in Pierre about an original character: "It cannot be born in the author’s imagination—it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life is from the egg." (p. 271) In Chapter Thirty-three, Melville argues for the romance as his genre, as did Hawthorne along the same lines in his Preface to The House of the Seven Gables. Melville asserts that fiction should show not only "more entertain­ ment, but, at bottom, even . . . more reality, than real life itself can show. Thus, though they Readers/ want novelty, they want nature, too: but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed."20 (pp. 206-207)

In all these occasions, Melville essentially argues for an organic theory of art. In this theory, Melville sees that by the arrangement of words the writer creates the appearance of experience, the likeness of events lived and felt and organized to constitute a completely and purely experienced reality. The writer holds the assorted items in his work together in a single illusion of life. Mel­ ville sees the office of literature to be the articulating 120

of knowledge and truths that cannot be captured discursively. His truths concern experiences "that are not formally amen- 21 able to the discursive projection." The most important discussion of Melville’s art, as far as this study is concerned, comes in the first paragraph of Book Seventeen in Pierre. In this passage, Melville shows his awareness of the two basic modes of writing and at the same time flatly asserts that he does not follow either. "Among the various conflicting modes of writing history, there would seem to be two grand practical distinc­ tions under which all the rest must subordinately range. By the one mode, all contemporaneous circumstances, facts, and events must be set down contemporaneously» by the other, they are only to be set down as the general stream of the narrative shall dictate» for matters which are kindred in time may be very irrelative to themselves. I elect neither of these» I am careless of either» both are well enough in their way» I write precisely as I please." (p. 280) Melville did write completely as he pleased in The Confidence-Man but not in his earlier works. For only in it did he abandon the tragic and comic modes in favor of striking on his own and producing a mode he felt comfortable with, a mode that would perfectly accommodate all that he felt essential in a work of art to portray and evoke truth as he saw it. The prevailing rhythm in the mode Melville created is what this study has called high parody. Since 121 the rhythm of the two other essential modes lend their names to their modes, it is only logical to follow suit and call the mode of The Confidence-Man high parody. * * *

The name "high parody mode" implies a particular man­ ner, method or pattern and a particular way of comprehend­ ing the universe. The method is essentially the method described above in the discussion of characters, plot and rhythm. Characters are not portrayed in transparency. They are not consistent nor are they known beyond their appear­ ances. They are enigmatic in their actions and in their motives. They look like types though they do not fit any type. Finally, they produce a compounded feeling of trust and distrust because of their total beings. The spatial and temporal aspects of plot do not systematize the world they depict. They do not give motives that would unravel the mystery of their world. The element of causation, so essential to plot as it is usually under­ stood, is not exactly supplied except in the vaguest sense. Yet there are limitless numbers of possible relations between the different characters and ideas. Rhythm does not follow the pattern of beginning, flourishing and end, nor does it follow the pattern of upset and recovery of the equilibrium of the main characters. It is the pattern of "high parody" where the upsetting of 122 the characters’ equilibrium is repeated parodisticallyj where the tensions created are supplanted with other ten­ sions with no apparent hope of release. The "high parody" mode portrays life and the universe as full of enigmas. Man is at the center of the universe faced with the predicament of urgent decisions that are not easy to make. There are many possible ways of moral action, yet none are totally satisfactory. Acting according to any of the possible alternatives can lead to possible ethical or material failure. At the same time the inability to act will result in definite bankruptcy on all levels. The urgency of moral and intellectual making of decisions is of utmost importance in the "high parody" mode. Equally important are the ambiguities that shroud every aspect of life in the universe portrayed.

The mode of high parody in The Confidence-Man per­ vades every aspect of the book, including its language and the "point of view" from which it is told. Many critics have words of praise for Melville's polished style. This is not surprising for it. seems, from the extant manuscript of Chapter Fourteen, that Melville revised his text many times before he was satisfied with it. In every instance of the revisions, Melville changed positive and negative statements and made them unobtrusively equivocal; and he trimmed unnecessary words. 123 Professor Elizabeth Foster has the best treatment of Melville’s style in The Confidence-Man. Except for her assertion that Melville shortened sentences to avoid sacre- ligious statements, this study agrees with her analysis of style completely. The style that Melville invented or evolved for the expository parts of this novel desiderates under­ statement, underemphasis, litotes, and complexity that looks like simplicity. As we see him in his revisions moving always in these directions, and away from the loose structure, open clarity, and directness of his earliest versions of passages, we watch many ideas growing less and less obvious. ... If any testimony were needed that artistry, taste, and genius presided at the composition of this novel, it could be found in the consistency with which Melville’s tireless revision pushed towards one wished-for, clearly defined, and hitherto uncreated style, the style proper to the mood and matter of his unique novel, (p. 376) Melville's attempt to avoid being trapped by the logic of language and thus make statements he does not want to make is evident in his equivocal statements that appear 22 almost on every page of the book. The description of Goneril is one example of many similar statements: Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too straight, indeed, for a woman, a complexion natur­ ally rosy, and which would have been charmingly so, but for a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of the glazed colors on stone-ware. . . . Upon the whole, aided by the resources of the toilet, her appearance at distance was such that some might have thought her, if anything, rather beautiful, though of a style of beauty rather peculiar and cactus­ like. (p. 65) Melville used one or more of the qualifying words ’’seem," "perhaps," "may be," "possibly," "nearly," "more or less," and "appear" and "almost" on every page. He 124 used a series of negations to give the same effect« "The merchant, though not used to be very indiscreet, yet, being not entirely inhuman, remained not entirely unmoved." (pp. 22-23) To achieve the same equivocal impression Melville „ extensively uses the parenthetical structure, as evident in the description of Goneril. Thus, word choice and syn­ tax help produce the doubtful and questionable meanings. Images, which on the whole are toned down in their poignancy, are used so inconsistently that they cannot be taken as tools from which to derive definite meanings. The snake imagery which applies to Noble and the Cosmopolitan is interpreted by some critics to distinguish confidence- men» but it is also used in connection with Pitch, who is considered by the same critics a tower of strength in his defense against the Confidence-Man. On the other hand, several angel-related images are used in connection with the Cosmopolitan and other characters that are supposed to be "con-men." The images and allusions used in the des­ cription of the man with gold sleeve buttons are representa­ tive of the imagery used throughout. The way the action and materials of the book are presented to the reader serves the mode of the book. By no means Is the point of view that of an omniscient author. Rather the author is almost self-effacing. Yet he does surface and address the reader on several occasions of which the three chapters on the art of fiction are the most 125 notable examples. However, Chapter Twenty-three is prob­ ably the best and most succinct example of the different vantage points the narrator assumes—though it has the only example of portrayal of the inner thoughts of a character. The chapter begins with an objective and journalistic pic­ ture of Cairo. This is followed by a passage where the narrator becomes poetic in his description of Pitch. This passage which starts with the narrator becomes, at a point that cannot exactly be pinpointed, Pitch himself, depressed and soliloquising on his experience in which he confronted the man with a brass-plate. The narrator then emerges as an omniscient one at an indefinite point—only to shift again towards the end of the chapter, to an observant nar­ rator who records, like a camera and a tape recorder, what he sees without giving any specific judgment on what he sees Most of the book is told from this last point of view and the times when an omniscient author surfaces are balanced between positive and negative statements. The reader’s reaction to these shifts in point of view will have to be one full of bewilderment, which is the desired response. For the narrator does not take the hand of the reader to lead him through the mires of the book. In fact the narrator at times gives the impression that he is the Confidence-Man leading the reader into the muddy waters. Yet at other times the narrator seems as bewildered as the reader, groping for a satisfying answer 126 to the question that besets him. The book remains a "mouse­ trap" similar to Hamlet’s play by which he tried to uncover the appearance of Claudius. As Hamlet’s mouse-trap managed to expose the king but also exposed Hamlet's intention and suspicions, so does Melville's book, which points out the book's basic question. It also unravels for the reader his own position towards the basic issues and exposes any lack of adequate contemplation of this issue on the part of the reader. Thus the reader in his relationship to the book becomes, in the words of Melville in Moby Dick, "a Loose- Fish and a Fast-Fish, too."

The Confidence-Man is not Melville's first attempt to capture the ambiguities of life and to try to solve them. Moby Dick was his large-scope attempt to do just that. If a reader interprets the story in Moby Dick as one that traces the escapades of the whale, then Melville did suc­ ceed in capturing the ambiguities in a magnificent and sym­ bolical way. But the story concerns Ahab. Ahab is a seeker? he has a mission to fulfill. He sees evil in the world and wants to strike it down. The reader gets to know Ahab's motives and history. He is an intelligent and pas­ sionate man. His will and determination are solid. The experience he had when Moby Dick sheared his leg impels him to seek this whale out in order to have another bout with it. His hate for it becomes a monomania that drives 12? every other feeling away. Hatred for the whale develops Ahab's picture of the Schale to a vision of evil masquerad­

ing in the universe without any check. With lack of any other strong idea or feeling to alter this vision of evil, Ahab pushes himself and his crew into a long and costly pursuit of the whale. Assuming that evil can be fought only with evil, Ahab resorts to every possible method that may lend aid to his mission. But the end seems inevitable— a catastrophy that kills everyone but the one who will narrate the tale. Essentially, the rhythm of this tale is tragic. The metaphor of life as a journey is obviously employed. Ahab's potentialities are immense but he exhausts all of them in the course of the book's action. The pattern the reader encounters is that of a life that develops, thrives, and relinquishes power. The ennobling factor of the tragedy is the vision of life as fulfilled and accomplished and thus lifting the "hero," above defeat. Ahab is a "tragic hero" who "lives and matures in some particular respect; his entire being is concentrated in one aim, one passion, one conflict and ultimate defeat."23 Hence, if Moby Dick

is Ahab's story, which it is, then it has a tragic vision, which, by necessity, is a comprehensible vision despite the ambiguity of evil in the universe. Though man is trapped in his situation, he is nevertheless capable of glorious action that sends him to his doom. 128

Pierre has a similar rhythm and vision. The meta­ phor of life as a journey is present and so is the pattern of growth, fulfillment and decay. Despite its sub-title, The Ambiguities, the vision and rhythm of the book is clearly tragic and thus contains a definite meaning and interpretation of life. Pierre, more than any other char­ acter created by Melville, is fully developed through moti­ vating forces that lead to his growth. The story is his personal tragic history. Pierre fails and meets his doom yet not before he has fulfilled his potentialities and is consequently ennobled through his fall. Thus though the book vouches to deal with ambiguities, its mode is tragic. In Pierre and Moby Dick the ambiguities assume symbolical garb and are essential to the tragic action. They remain, however, parts of larger tragic pictures of the cosmos. In "Bartleby," Melville places the ambiguities more at the core of the world picture he draws. Bartleby is an enigma from beginning to end. He does not say much besides his haunting, mildly spoken "I would prefer not to." Bartleby’s response is decisively unique in the way it is employed. It answers every question, request or order demanded of him. The simplicity of the response is frus­ trating to the people around Bartleby, and also, not sur­ prisingly, to the readers and critics of the story. The tension in the story builds as the territory to which Bartleby extends his attitude expands. The singleness of 129 his mind remains the same from beginning to end yet, despite this consistency the reader’s appraisal of him changes. The building of the tension reaches the crescendo in which Bartleby dies with nothing resolved. The rhythm of the story and its action is, by necessity, tragic. However, absent is the element of fulfillment, of flourishing before the tragic end that is essential to tragedy. Bartleby becomes to the reader what Moby Dick was to Ahab, what the doubloon was to the different on-lookers. The reader who is ready to dismiss him as a mentally unbalanced character cannot do so because of the actions of the lawyer-narrator. The narrator infuses the singular repeated action of Bartleby with different meanings in the narrator’s varied attempts to solicit an answer from Bartleby other than "I would prefer not to." Melville seems to be very conscious in "Bartleby" of the relationships of reader, writer and work. It seems that he is experimenting with the possible ways to evoke in the reader a desired response. In his uniform response, Bartleby makes untenable all the possible ways of action that are suggested to him. His insistence forces the nar­ rator and the reader to reevaluate this position every time Bartleby makes his preference clear. Bartleby's per- sistance in keeping his searching eyes open and in preserv­ ing his stance, makes the reader know the seriousness and gravity of Bartleby's position. Bartleby is neither 130 satisfied with his choices nor is he despondent or resigned. Yet what it is that makes him behave this way is not entirely clear. The very end of the story forces a tragic interpre­ tation. The narrator suggests that Bartleby, who dies with eyes staring at the walls as they did throughout the story, may have worked in the Dead Letter Office and that his experiences there may have affected him. In that office Bartleby must have been burning among other things, "a bank-note sent in swiftest charity—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life. These letters speed to death. Ah, Bartleby.’ Ah, humanity:" This ending comes in an addi­ tional paragraph at the end separated from the rest of the text. It seems that Melville had to supply this last sec­ tion to explain Bartleby's history that became such because of his end. The beginning of Bartleby's history was not supplied by Melville earlier in the story but it had to be furnished when Bartleby's end was made clear. The lack of complete harmony between the tragic rhythm and the ambiguities that permeate the story is responsible for the many interpretations that suggest despair as the main mood Melville tries to communicate. Ambiguities that end in the catastrophe of Bartleby would have to be interpreted along the same lines. The reader is left with an uneasy 131 feeling of ambiguity not clearly resolved. Melville continued his experimentation in form in the pieces he wrote after "Bartleby." He published in the following years after the publication of "Bartleby," "The Encantadas," "The Lightning-Rod Man," "The Piazza" and "Benito Cereno," among other fiction. At least in the first and the last of these stories, Melville was experimenting with form and its rhythm. In "The Encantadas," Melville’s attitude is closer to that of Mob.y Dick than any other work of this period. Yet in the ten sketches that constitute the piece, Melville basically uses the narrative method rather than the dramatic. Thus the vision presented is more important than any other con­ sideration. "Benito Cereno" has a form that is odd for Melville and for a work of its length. Warner Berthoff best explains the form in this piece as that of "a riddle and therefore requiring to be twice told, once for trial and once for confirmation." Berthoff asserts "that the matching of form and substance is extraordinarily tactful (and freehanded, original)."2^ The ambiguities in this story increase until they reach a deadly stage, but they are resolved not in a tucked-in paragraph at the end but in an extended retelling of the story. Thus, in this story an explanation is feasible and is provided, and the universe is tragically meaningful though full of ambiguities. Only in The Confidence-Man does the reader see the 132 ambiguities expressed in both vision and form because the mode that Melville creates is unique and appropriate to his desired goal of arousing reader awareness of essential issues in a masterful method. From this perspective, The Confidence-Man is Melville's largest success in creating a work of art that is impeccable, regardless of which aspect one considers. In it he achieves an expression of what he always thought to be at the heart of life, one that in its comprehensibility and excellence was not equalled by any of his other works. The organic unity this book has is com­ plete. For its characterization, plot, language, rhythm and vision all lead to the expression of the same feeling and effect. 133 FOOTNOTES

Susanne L. Langer, Feeling and Form (New York, 1953) p. 12?. Professor Langer's treatment of rhythm influenced the writing of this chapter to a degree that a mere refer- enee to it is not enough acknowledgment. 2Ibid., p. 214.

3lbid., p. 327. 4Ibid., p. 333. 5Ibid., p. 327. ^Herman Melville, A Critical Study (New York, 1949), P. 9. 7"Afterward," The Confidence-Man (New York, 1964), p. 209. p In The Limits of Metaphors: A Study of Melville, Conrad and Faulkner (Ithaca, 19677, p. 137» James Gnetti suggests that the satire in The Confidence-Man is generally directed so as to display a game without rules and a world beyond understanding. Yet critics concentrated their dis­ cussions of satire in the book to specific topics. In "Melville's The Confidence-Man as a Ship of Philosophers," Southern Humanities Review, 3 (Spring, 1969)» 158-165» Fred E. Brouwer argues that Melville antithesized self-love against love. Melville’s "No Trust," according to Brouwer, symbolizes the Hobbesian challenge to all forms of altru­ ism. Brouwer further argues that the con men can be identi­ fied as philosophers who attempted to meet Hobbes' challenge The first philosopher as con man is Shaftesbury who main­ tained that altruism is genuine. John Ringman, like Shaftes bury, justifies altruistic feelings by an identification of the beautiful with benevolence and of ugliness with wicked­ ness. Brouwer finds many other similarities to document his contention. The second philosopher as con man is Berkeley, who appears as the man in a gray coat and white tie. Both tried to promote practical benevolence, among other things they have in common. The third con man philosopher is Bishop Butler who appears as Mr. Truman. Both examine human nature and try in one form or another to sell stock in human nature, and both need authentication: a big book. The next con man is the herb-doctor who represents Schelling for whom nature is 134 a manifestation of the Spirit and evil is a shadowy part of the total system. The herb-doctor in a somewhat similar fashion directs his appeal to the cure-all, Nature. The man with brass plates who represents William Paley is the last con man philosopher Brouwer mentions. Both Paley and the man from the Philosophical Intelligence Office make an analytical study of man. In their analyses, both proceed by an analogy from the physical to the moral. Brouwer concludes that the philosophers are swindlers as well as fools» for they defend altruism and prey on con­ fidence, yet men do not live by the rational philosophies they profess. Brouwer may have followed a hint from Eliza­ beth Foster who first suggested that Melville moves in his philosophical satire on a chronological order from Shaftes- buryan to utilitarian optimism. In "Herman Melville as an Existentialist: An Analy­ sis of Typee, Mardi, Moby Dick, and The Confidence-Man," p. 32, Saada Ishag asserts that, with malicious humor, Mel­ ville shows the impotence of religion to solve the eternal paradoxes and ambiguities of human existence. While Law­ rence Grauman, Jr. in "Suggestions on the Future of The Confidence-Man," Papers on English Language and Literature, 1 (Summer, 19^5)241-249, finds that by the end of the book Melville has shown that there seems to be no future for Christianity. In fact, Grauman finds the entire con­ flict in the book to be only apparent and man and his savior are lost from the beginning and the consequences are to be decided. Grauman warns, however, that it is a mistake to take Melville’s view of Christianity as ineffectual, as any­ thing but tragic: "There is nothing wrong with religion except that it does not work," but nor does anything else. Grauman concludes "Christ, for some inscrutable reason, has been displaced as God’s agent by the Devil. But this is not to say that faith, hope, and charity are evil instincts." In "Melville and the Manichean Illusion," Texas Studies in Literature, 4 (Spring, 1962), 117-129, J. C. Oates presents a different point of view when she asserts that if the con man triumphs, paradoxically it is Christianity which triumphs because its innocence and charity can know no hypocrisy. When the con man loses it is a loss for Christianity and a token of its hypocrisy. While Bruce Franklin’s reading does not see the novel as concerned with Christianity, he admits in his introduction to his edition of The Confidence-Man (Indianapolis, 1967), p. xxv, that a reader with Judeo- Christian background will view the confidence man as repre­ senting either Christ or Satan masquerading as Christ. Various critics have called Melville’s book a great transcendental satire, but there are those who think 135 otherwise. In A Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville (New York, 1962), p. 14, James E. Miller, Jr. finds that only Winsome and Egbert who represent transcendentalism are able to cope with the con man and gull him and thus "they demonstrate a realistic—and maskless—adjustment to the world as it is." Furthermore, Miller defends Winsome and Egbert against the charge of their being inhuman by saying that in their deal­ ing with the con man they cannot share human sympathies with the non-human—with the devil himself, (p. 190) Miller argues that Winsome does not let his mystic vision obscure his view of the world, while Egbert is living proof of the reconciliation of the ideal and the practical, (p. 191) Elizabeth Foster argues that the target of satire in the episode involving the herb-doctor is Emerson and the New England transcendentalists and especially Emerson’s doc­ trines of the issuance of good from evil and that of com­ pensation. She adds that the attack on Emerson is most poignant and complete leaving no credit for Emerson in the episodes involving Winsome and Egbert, (p. lxxiii) Foster conjectures that the satire on Emerson is probably the nucleus around which the book was written, (p. lxxix) Q 7These have been mentioned in the first chapter of this study. There are many other instances of stylistic parody: part of the meeting between Mr. Roberts and Ring- man (pp. 22-23) is parodic of the sentimental style? part of the meeting between the man in a gray coat and the man with gold sleeve buttons (pp. 40-41) is parodic of lawyer's and clergyman’s syntax patterns; part of the discussion between Pitch and the P.1.0, man (pp. 131-132) is parodic of scholarly disputation. l°Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theatre (Prince­ ton, 1949), P. 230. l^See Raymond Long, The Hidden Sunt A Study of the Influence of Shakespeare on the Creative Imagination of Herman Melville. Unpublished dissertation (U.C.L.A., 1965)» p. 219. Mr. Long subscribes to the same opinion and finds the dumb-mute suggestive of the dumb-shows that preceded early stage works. 1 ? Bruce Franklin notices that Melville found more ways to involve the reader and invented many tricks that, make the reader both the victim and the subject of the fic­ tion. Throughout the novel, Franklin suggests, Melville, hints that he knows all and asks the reader for his confi­ dence yet makes it impossible to hear the word "confidence" with any ease. Throughout this, Melville makes every impression a product of the interaction of his mind and. that of the reader. For the dialectic serves to establish a new cosmos out of the old chaos whose materials exist in 136

each reader, (p. xiii-xviii) Elizabeth Foster asserts that the book is important because it is a document of the rela­ tionship between writer and audience, (p. xvii) She sees Melville indulging in double-writing, and further speculates that he may have intended that no one see his "shadow story." (p. xix) Edgar F. Dryden finds the reader like the victims of the con man led to be suspicious and tempted "to bring to the surface the meaning and order which seem to lie con­ cealed." Melville's Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth (Baltimore. 1968), p. 151. Dryden adds that the reader is further confronted with a choice between a poisonous world and a dangerous, fictitious one "each of which is controlled by a polymorphic imposter who asks for confidence in order to betray it." (p. 174) Warner Berthoff claims that the book makes of the reader’s bewilderment part of its subject. It does not provide an order and pattern that a reader expects from it: "Herman Melville: The Confidence-Man," Landmarks of Ameri­ can Writing, Ed. Hennig Cohen (New York, 1969), p. 121. Merlin Bowen argues that a favorite trick of Melville is to lead the reader into a premature judgment of the characters as they are introduced. But the reader-narrator relation­ ship changes: the reader is invited to share in the ironies and is encouraged to be a fellow-conspirator yet is never entirely sure that he is admitted to the inner circle: "Tactics of Indirection in Melville’s The Confidence-Man," Studies in the Novel, 1 (Winter, 1969), p. 403. I3in his article, "The Metaphysics of Indian-hating," The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), p. 324, Herschel Parker reads the story of Colonel Moredock as a tragic study of the impracticality of Christianity. Parker terms the story "a satiric alle­ gory" in which the Indian-hater is a dedicated Christian since the Indian represents the Devil. Moredock does not fit the ordinary conception of a Christian, yet we must take him for a Christian according to Parker, (p. 326) Edwin Fussell terms the story "Melville's bitter burlesque," for at its base he sees the tragic contradiction that is inherent in the movement West: being pro-Indian and pro-American at the same time: Frontier: American Litera­ ture and the American West (Princeton, 19657» P* 323. Fussell goes on to assert that the story was placed in the middle of the book because the Indian was the crucial fact in American history, a fact which, Fussell warrants, every con man was anxious to conceal, (p. 324) Elizabeth Foster notices that the chapters that deal with Colonel Moredock are at the turning point of the novel, (p. lxv) She points out that Melville changes the 137 picture of the Indian from Hall's story and associates the Indian with the non-human elements of nature but he makes them extra human rather than sub-human? they hide their evil behind a mask of benignity, (p. lxviii) Ray B. Browne sees the story as reinforcing the main theme of showing what happens to a world that has rejected the teaching of the Savior, for "Indian-hating is only a synonym for man- hating"! Melville's Drive to Humanism, Purdue University Studies (Lafayette, Indiana, 1971)» p. 320. Richard Chase connects the story of Charlemont with Melville's "The Fiddler," as a story of withdrawal from the world after a period of success, (p. 200) In "The Story of Charlemont! A Dramatization of Melville's Concept of Fiction in The Confidence-Man! His Masquerade," Nine­ teenth-Century Fiction, 21 (June, 1966), pp. 78-79» Carolyn Lury Karcher finds enough similarities between the story of Charlemont and that of Christ to constitute evidence for an analogy. Herschel Parker's "The Story of China Aster'! A Tentative Explication," The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), sees the story as "an allegory of the artist as light giver." Parker points out that Orchis’s vocation keeps men from touching reality, while that of Aster gives light to the world, (p. 353) Parker suggests that the story is a tract "perfectly suit­ able to being passed out by a Temperance organization." He hints that the story may have been written for a differ­ ent reason and a different occasion, (p. 356) Daniel Hoff­ man suggests that China Aster hints at Christ while the name of Orchis suggests a superfluous flower: Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1969)» p. 3°5* He adds that the story weakens the unity of the book. Yet it restates the chief theme while at the same time it is the climax of two sub-themes that give the latter half of the book its unity, (p. 139) Hoffman conjectures that Melville, fearing the moral of the book might be dismissed as a tall tale, inserted the moral as a short allegory in a more uni­ versal form of reference, (p. 140) He explains the story as an allegory explaining the conflict between the Creative Promethean impulse and its opposite, the perversion of this impulse to private ends. (p. 145) Richard Chase considers the whole story superfluous and a blemish to the book because it fails to advance the movement of the book. (p. 203) In Herman Melville! A Biography (Berkeley, 1951)» p. 231» Leon Howard finds the story as standing out of harmony with its position in the book. l^James E. Miller, Jr. argues that the meaning exists on three levels: the realistic: western narrative? the symbolistic: American satire? and, the universal: alle­ gory. (p. 175) Miller also suggests as one of the themes, 138

"the inapplicability to this world of heaven’s law." (p. 177) J. C. Oates casts her vote for the same judgment and declares the theme to be a continuation of that of Pierre, (p. 122) Melville’s intention, according to Oates, is to display the hollowness of both points of view, the no trust and the professed Christianity, (p. 127) J. J. Gross finds Mel­ ville suggesting that Man in some degree creates his God and the society Melville depicts stands condemned because it fails to conceive of its Christ-figure as other than a weak figure to be discounted. Gross adds that Melville’s theme is the failure of the age to reconcile the alienated individual with the community of men: "Melville’s The Con- fidence-Man: The Problem of Source and Meaning," Bulletin of the Modern Language Association of Helsinki, 60 (Septem- ber, 1959), p. 306« In "The Confidence-Man as 'Trickster,'" American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 1 (First Quarter, 1969), Joseph Bairn reads the book as an initiation novel that describes the journey to the self. Failure to com­ plete the initiation results from the failure to see the world as a whole, (p. 83) In "Out of the Whale," The Nation, I69 (November 19, 1949), Leslie A. Fiedler reads the book as a sort of study of how Christ discovers the impossibility of his persuading people to have trust and thus learns how to masquerade in order to "'bamboozle" people into belief, (p. 494) Malcolm 0. Magow's "The Confidence-Man send Christian Deity: Melville’s Imagery of Ambiguity," Explorations of Literature, Louisiana State University Studies, 18 (19667, p. 99, argues for the ambiguity of appearances as the essential meaning of the novel. The artist must create ambiguous images of God if He is unknowable. Edgar A. Dryden suggests that the book demonstrates man’s conception of the supernatural is as fictitious as the world in which he lives, (p. 154) In "Source and Symbols for Melville’s Confidence- Man," The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), 298-316, John W. Shroeder sees the book as a dark one for it ends in a wreck. Yet Shroeder finds that one of the most interesting ideas to emerge from the book is the high value placed on individual­ ism and isolation as a means for the achievement of spiritual vision: Shroeder’s evidence: only the Indian- hater has succeeded in locating evil in its real home? there is no distortion in his vision of spiritual reality. Richard Chase finds the book demonstrating the gap between reality and appearance and "showing the absurdity of the attempt to lead the moral life where meaning and value shift ground." (p. 9) . Ray B. Browne finds the message of Melville to be "that charity, though it is alien in some societies, does not disappear, and that in America the 139 blank temporarily left will someday be filled in, and charity will be welcome": Melville's Drivé to Humanism, Purdue University Studies (Lafayette, Indiana, 1971)» p. 308« In "Theme and Structure in Melville’s The Confidence-Man»" American Literature, 33 (November, 1961), pp. 3°9-3l0, Walter Dubler considers the theme to be a commentary on American life derived from the conception of the tragic flaw. The victims fall because of excesses in their own characters and though it is not articulated the moral is: excess is destructive. Finally, two scholars have opinions similar to those expressed in this study. Edward Mitchell, "From Action to Essence: Some Notes on the Structure of Melville's The Confidence-Man," American Literature, 40 (March, 1968), p. 37, indicates that Melville offers a dramatic insight into the nature of the human condition, while not dictating the attitude the reader should take toward this condition. In "Melville's Confidence-Man: Allegory, Satire and the Irony of Intent," Cithara, 8 (May, 1969), p. 31» Bert C. Bach agrees with Mitchell and asserts that "Melville is satisfied merely to present what he observes." ^Edgar A. Dryden suggests that because of the many authorial manipulations, many aesthetic questions are raised about the nature of fiction. Melville comments in two ways: directly and through story intrusion. The intru­ sions of the author remind the reader of a more solid reality than fiction, yet this reality is shaken by a reminder that reality has surfaces and is inconsistent. Dryden calls Chapter XIV "Fiction as an Imitation of Nature," and Melville's assumption in it is that as a mimetic form, the novel is judged not by its internal consistency but by reference to nature. But the narrator asserts that nature is knowable and this makes any literary imitation morally fraudulent. Dryden calls Chapter XXXIII "Fiction as a Self-Contained World." He finds Melville's apology for fiction as an autonomous art depends on the argument that the narrator divert and entertain. He adds that the fic­ tion world is more real than nature since the novelistic world allows uninhibited role playing. Chapter XLIV is called "The World as Fiction": here the question of what is original is left for the reader. Thus, Dryden concludes, the reader becomes a victim and is loaded with suspicions, (pp. 151-156, 166-167, 181-182) In "Some Notes on the Structure of The Confidence- Man ." American Literature, 29 (November, 1957)» p. 278, John G. Cawelti argues that three breaks have the function of developing the meaning of the narrative and emphasizing the significant episodes. On the other hand, Bert C. Bach in "Melville's Confidence-Man: Allegory, Satire and the Irony of Intent," Cithara, 8 (May, 1969), p. 30» explains 140 that the three chapters on the art of fiction either justify or explain the dramatic viewpoint of narration that Mel­ ville employs in the book. In "Tactics of Indirection in Melville’s The Confidence-Man," Studies in the Novel, 1 (Winter, 1969), p. 405, Merlin Bowen notices that Melville is at pains to make the interruptions noticeable rather than smooth. Bowen argues that Melville does this because he wants the reader to stop and consider the deeper implications of his narrative. ^Herman Melville, Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces, Ed. Raymond W. Weaver (New York, 1963), p. 131» ^Herman Melville, Pierre (New York, 1964), p. 170. 18Ibid. l9Ibid.. p. 295.

20One would immediately think of Henry James' defini­ tion of the romance. "The only general attribute of pro­ jected romance that I can see, the only one that fits all its cases, is the fact of the kind of experience with which it deals—experience liberated, so to speak; experience dis­ engaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, exempt from the con­ ditions that vze usually know to attach to it and, if we wish so to put the matter, drag upon it, and operating in a medium which relieves it, in a particular interest, of the inconvenience of a related, a measurable state, a state subject to all our vulgar communities." Quoted in Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition (New York, 1957)» P. 36. 21Susanne L. Langer, Feeling and Form (New York, 1953)» P. 241. 22 In his L'Alitterature Contemporaine (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958)» P. 83, quoted in Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd (New York, 1969), p. 20, Claude Mauriac argues that anyone "who speaks is carried along by the logic of language and its articulations. Thus the writer who pits himself against the unsayable must use all his cunning so as not to say what the words make him say against his will, but to express instead what by their very nature they are designed to cover up: the uncertain, the contradictory, the unthinkable." Melville's revision seems governed mainly by his desire to avoid saying anything that can be construed as a positive or a negative statement. 23Langer, pp. 356-357. ?4 Warner Berthoff. Ed., Great Short Works of Herman Melville (New York, 1970), p. 7^. 25Ibid., p. 328. CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Though Melville was satisfied with Mob.y Dick, the novel was not a financial success. He started' working immediately on Pierre which he described to the wife of his close friend, Hawthorne, as a "rural bowl of milk." He wanted to turn out a popular story, for he felt financial strains. That year, 1851, the Melvilles attended a Christ­ mas dinner at their close neighbors, the Morewoods. The hostess, Sarah Morewood, described in a letter to George Duyckinck the rigorous and disciplined work Melville was following to finish his book. She remarked that Melville was writing "under a state of morbid excitement which will soon injure his health."1 This kind of statement about

Melville's health was to be repeated over and again by several members of the family. Melville's wife, Elizabeth, spread the report that her husband was overworking himself to the point of physical ruin. When Melville finished Pierre he thought that he succeeded in writing a book "very much more calculated for popularity." But the book was poorly received. In fact, even Melville's friend Evert Duyckinck was indignant in his review of Pierre. The review, in the Southern Quar­ terly Review goes further to claim "that Herman Melville 142 has gone 'clean daft,' is very much to be feared; certainly he has given us a very mad book." Because of this bad reception of his book, Melville was under financial strain, a fact which prompted him family to try to secure a consu­ lar position for him and thus change his literary occupation to a more profitable one. The efforts of the family failed but Melville was not in any danger of poverty even though his books were not selling. He turned to writing short pieces for the maga­ zines in the summer of 1853. He farmed his land; he was in good health and good mind to compose a masterpiece, "Bartleby.” He began working on a longer narrative which later was'entitled "The Encantadas." Meanwhile, the short stories being published were successful. Israel Potter was serialized rather successfully as was Benito Cereno which was finished quickly due to an attack of rheumatism in the winter of 1855 that hampered Melville greatly. In the early summer of that year, Melville had an attack of scia­ tica for which Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was summoned to examine Melville's state of health. Melville commented on this examination in his short story "I and My Chimney," which, if it shows anything at all about Melville person­ ally, it indicates a mind very much in control of the realities of the times and his own situation. In the fall of the same year, Melville attended a costumed-picnic (which Leon Howard, among others, suggests 143

as the possible location where Melville conceived his idea for The Confidence-Man).3 At this time Melville was

regarded by some members of his family as feeling well. Some of his short stories were being published and he was doing some farming while he wrote his last book. Upon com­ pletion, while a fair copy was being prepared to be sub­ mitted to a publisher in July of I856, Melville’s family again was concerned for his health. But, according to Leon Howard, his activities during the summer show that though "he may have been worried and tired of writing, he was neither rheumatic nor unsocial."^ Yet Melville’s wife worried enough that she finally influenced her father to support the idea of sending Melville on a journey to Europe and the Middle East.. The arrangements for the trip completed, Melville started to New York where he spent an evening with Evert Duyckinck who thereafter described it in the October 1 entry of his diary: "Herman Melville passed the evening with me— fresh from his mountain charged to the muzzle with his sailor metaphysics and jargon of things unknowable. But a good stirring evening—ploughing deep and bringing to the surface some rich fruits of thought and experience."3

After signing a contract to publish his book, Melville departed to England and the Mediterranean. While in London, Melville visited Hawthorne and had many talks with him. In his journal, Hawthorne mentions the physical problems 144 Melville experienced, "neurological problems in his head and limbs." He adds that Melville looked "a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder. . . . his writings, for a long time past, have indicated a morbid state of mind."^

Hawthorne’s last remark indicates what Melville’s family thought of their son. The same remark appeared in different forms to explain what seemed misanthropic to many readers and critics of Melville’s last work. The words Timonism, nihilism and cynicism often were used to describe not only the book but also Melville's condition when writing it. The typical argument takes the following pattern: losing all hope for any literary success and despairing of all forms of belief, Melville, slightly insane, was driven into composing a biting satire that attacks all forms of religion and charity, at* the same time asserting that only 7 knavery and distrust are viable ways of conduct. But nothing of the surviving evidence can show that Melville was in such a cynical or misanthropic state of mind. In fact, writing the book seemed to put him in a good mood for his journey. When he arrived in New York, Melville renewed his friendship with Evert Duyckinck--which had turned very cold since the latter's indignant review of Pierre. Duyckinck met Melville at least three time and on each occasion he had a good word to say about Melville's attitude. In his entry for October 9» 1856, Duyckinck wrote, "In the evening at Mr. Shepherd's, in 14th str 145 with Herman and Allan Melville and /Robert/ Tomes. Good talk—Herman warming like an old sailor over the supper," 8 And in his October 11 entry, Duyckinck wrote, "Saw Herman Melville off in the propeller Glascow for Glascow . . . Mel ville right hearty—Pleasant fates to him on his Neopolitan o way."7 From Hawthorne’s journal entries concerning Mel­ ville's visit with the Hawthornes in England, one can best construe the state of mind and convictions of Melville. One remembers the delight Melville felt when he read Hawthorne's letter about Moby Dick, a delight expressed in Melville's answer: "... your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book."}'0 Five years later Hawthorne still seems to have understood Melville. In his journal entry for November 12, 1856, Hawthorne describes a walk and a discussion he had with Melville: . . . we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in the hollow among the sand hills (sheltering our­ selves from the high, cool wind) and smoked a cigar. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Provi­ dence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"? but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wander­ ing to and fro over these deserts, as dismal and mono­ tonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious 146 man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.IT Hawthorne did not know that Melville depicted and evoked a vision of the wandering soul between belief and disbelief, restless in either yet too humanistic not to do something about the problem. One rather safely assumes that Melville seemed hearty and warm to Duyckinck because he most probably was satisfied with his creation of the most perfect image to express his vision. When Duyckinck read The Confidence-Man, he under­ lined in his copy of the book a few lines in Chapter Thirty- three: "So precious to man is the approbation of his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied to but a work of imagination, is no easy thing.” 12 Duy­ ckinck must have realized that the man who wrote these lines could not be a misanthrope, a Timon or a cynic. Melville’s humanity and his regard for his fellow man is great enough to make their esteem a very important element to him. Mel­ ville could not offer a vision of the cosmos that would illumine the right path for his fellow men. He could not see such a path. He makes that very clear in the chapter before last when he discusses original characters. After asserting the rarity of original characters, Melville adds that "in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate conception of such a character, an effect, in its way, akin to that which Genesis attends upon the 147

beginning of things. ... to produce but one original char­ acter, he /an author/ must have much luck. There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon in fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's imagination—it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all life is from the egg." (p. 2?1) Thus, because original characters illuminate the world in which they live and function as law-givers and prophets, Melville's book was void of them. And the reverse of the argument works as well, for because Melville does not have a belief that he can rest on he could not provide an original character. Yet Melville does not relinquish the search. Such a char­ acter will appear and must appear: and the journey of the faithful—Fidele—will continue, and "something further may follow of this Masquerade." * * *

Something, hopefully, may follow from this study. This study is of The Confidence-Man, yet it seems that the concept of high parody that emerged could apply to other works and other authors. Studies need to be made of the applicability of this term to the group of works of art that are awkwardly labeled "tragicomedies," and to works that do not seem to fit either of the two most commonly- practiced modes, comedy and tragedy. The plays that are grouped as belonging to the theatre of the absurd seem to have a mode of high parody as do such works as Moliere's 148

The Misanthrope, Janies Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, and Mark Twain’s Pudd'nhead Wilson, to cite a few examples. If the premises and characteristics of the mode of high parody are to he tested against other works besides The Confidence-Man, they should be applied to works written when their authors were at a point in their careers when they were torn by their inability to accept or reject beliefs available to them, while the new beliefs that these authors later adopted had not arrived on their horizons. Works written under these conditions will, most probably, exhibit characters, plots and rhythms analogous to those perceived and discussed above in regard to The Confidence- Man. 149

FOOTNOTES

Ijay Leyda, The Melville Log (New York, 1951)» P. 441 Sarah Morewood to George Duyckinck in a letter dated Decem­ ber 28, 1851: "Mr Herman was more quiet than usual— still he is a pleasant companion at all times and I like him very much— Mr Morewood now that he knows him better likes him the more— still he dislikes many of Mr Hermans opinions and religious views— It is a pity that Mr Melville so often in conversation uses irreverent language— he will not be popular in society here on that very account— but this will not trouble him— I think he cares very little as to what others may think of him or his books so long as they sell well— I hear that he is now engaged in a new work /Pierre/ as frequently not to leave his room till quite dark in the evening— when he for the first time during the whole day partakes of solid food— he must therefore write under a state of morbid excitement which will soon injure his health— I laughed at him somewhat and told him that the recluse life he was leading made his city friends think that he was slightly insane— he replied that long ago he came to the same conclusion himself— but if he left home to look after Hungary the cause in hunger would suffer." 2Ibid.. p. 463. 3Leon Howard, Herman Melville: A Biography (Los Angeles, 1967), pp. 226-227. Other scholars have found different sources for the book. In "The Original Confi­ dence-Man," American Quarterly, no. 1 (First Quarter, 1969)» 560-567, J. D. Bergman makes a case for a real criminal as a source. In July 8, 1849, there appeared in toe New York Herald an article on the Swindler William Thompson who was described as a con man (possibly the first time the term was used since the OED’s first cita­ tion is later than July 8, 1849) who used the word "confi­ dence" in his tricks. Bergmann also cites the editorial that appeared three days later which focused on both the con man and men of Wall Street ("The Confidence Man on a large scale") and satirized the established society and the financial side of it particularly. According to Bergmann the editorial was widely circulated. Bergmann also cites an article in The Literary World, which used "Con Man" as a generic term of a larger sphere of meaning to include politics and merchandise. However, this article shows that the existence of con men is a good sign there are small virtues in the societies where men can be swindled, (p. 566) It seems that the incident of captur­ ing a con man stirred the public and Bergmann cites evi­ dence for the possibility of a farce called "The Confi­ dence Man" that was presented in Burton’s theatre for the 150 first time on July 23, 1849. From the evidence, Bergmann concludes that there was hardly a script and that the piece was an interlude put together by the company. One of the characters seems to be a collecting agent of the new tem­ perance movement who was mentioned in the review of the play. (p. 568) Bergmann discovers evidence of the reappearance of the con man in 1855 in Albany at the time when Melville started working on The Confidence-Man. The Evening Journal of Albany printed the account and so did the Springfield Daily Republican. "The Original Confidence Man in Town— A Short Chapter on Misplaced Confidence." Some of the inci­ dents mentioned in the article parallel those in Melville's book. (p. 571) Paul Smith’s findings in "The Confidence- Man and the Literary World of New York," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 16 (March, 1962), 329-337» are similar to those of Bergmann. Michael S. Reynolds in "The Prototype for Mel­ ville's Confidence-Man," P.M.L.A., 86 (October, 1971)» 1009-1013, draws parallels between Melville's character and. the con man of the Herald, in addition to confirming Smith's and Bergmann's findings. In a major article, "Source and Symbols for Melville's Confidence-Man," The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, Ed. Herschel Parker (New York, 1971), pp. 298-316, John W. Shroeder suggests Hawthorne's "The Celes­ tial Railroad" as a source, and argues that Melville trans­ muted Hawthorne's train to the steamer Fidele. (p. 300) In the New Jerusalem and its stocks sold by the man with a book, Shroeder finds a similarity to the Valley of Eden in Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit. Shroeder suggests also that the list of the pilgrims on the Fidele may owe its accumu­ lation of nouns to Bunyan’s example, while the rapid appear­ ance and disappearance of actors could have been suggested by a passage of Hawthorne's story. Another source that Shroeder finds is Spenser. He says that Ringman, Truman, the herb-doctor, and Frank Goodman are of the same alle­ gorical family of Spenser's Sansfoy and Sansjoy and Sansloy. Shroeder notices that in Hawthorne's Fair there was a stock called "conscience" and in Melville's Fair it is "confi­ dence." The demand is great and the payment is damnation in both. (p. 307) John J. Gross in "Melville's The Confi­ dence-Man: the Problem of Source and Meaning," Bulletin of Modern Language Association of Helsinki, 60 (Sept. 25» 1959)» 299-310» suggests a source and develops a germ of meaning. He finds in the seventeenth-century English work of the speculative philosopher Joseph Glanville, The Vanity of Dogmatizing, parallels of theme and verbal echoes that seem more than a coincidence, (p. 304) Marius Bewley in The Eccentric Design: Form in the Classic American Novel parallels the ending of Melville's book to Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." (p. 125) Dorothee Bfi. Finkelstein in Melville's Orienda (New. Haven, 1961), pp. 40-41, finds 151

a possible source in "The Barber’s Story of His Sixth Brother" in the Arabian Nights. In it the subject of hos­ pitality is linked to a breach of confidence and masquerade. Paschal Reeves in "The ’Deaf Mute’ Confidence Man: Mel­ ville’s Imposter in Action," Modern Language Notes, 75 (January, i960), suggests the possibility of a model for the deaf-mute in a con man who impersonates Melville in I850 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, (p. 19) While Edward H. Rosenberry in Melville and the Comic Spirit (Cambridge, 1955)» P. 146, notices a touch of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and a literal resemblance to chapters in Fielding’s Tom Jones. He claims that The Confidence-Man "begins and ends with a Shandian device and is filled with Shandian echoes." Daniel Hoffman in Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1965), 285-286suggests Hawthorne's "Earth's Holo­ caust," and "The Intelligence Office" and "Young Goodman Brown" as possible sources. He adds that there is an inverted resemblance to Don Quixote. Finally, he mentions the impossibility of Melville's escape from the influence of Cotton Mather's Magnolia Christi Americana in which Mel­ ville immersed himself. In a section of his book Frontier: American Literature and the American West (Princeton, 1965), Edwin Fussell suggests that a passage in Swift's "Mechani­ cal Operation of the Spirit," is probably the main source for Melville, (p, 308) Fussell suggests another source: Orestes Brownson's novel The Spirit Rapper (1854) in which chapter titles and a character that resembles Winsome who's satirized in a Melvillian fashion appear, (p. 308) Ray­ mond Long's dissertation, "The Hidden Sun: A Study of the Influence of Shakespeare on the Creative Imagination of Herman Melville (U.C.L.A., 1965), finds more specific refer­ ence to Shakespeare in The Confidence-Man than in Moby Dick and Pierre combined, (p. 217~5 Long points out that Fidele is a name assumed by the heroine of Cymbeline when she ven­ tures disguised as a boy. Long asserts that in no other of Shakespeare's plays is there so much deception practiced to so many. (p. 218) Long also suggests that Hamlet. A Midsummer Night*s Dream, Twelfth Night, A Winter's Tale, As You Like It, Timon of Athens and Henry IV Part II have some influence too. Ray B. Browne in Melville * s Drive to Humanism, Purdue University Studies (Lafayette, Indiana, 1971)»suggests that The Confidence-Man derives from Haw­ thorne's stories. Most influential of these is The Scarlet Letter to which Browne draws parallels. He mentions "Ethan Brand" as another source. In addition Browne suggests that the book is more theoretically related to other works by Melville than previously recognized and mentions "Bartleby" as a clear example. Finally, Richard Chase in Herman Mel­ ville, A Critical Study (New York, 1949), p. 186, finds that Melville's con man is based on the folk figure of "The evasive Soap man," a sketch that appeared in Spirit of the Times in I85O. A related problem to that of source 152

which troubles some scholars is the possibility that Melville portrayed actual people in The Confidence-Man. Egbert S. Oliver in "Melville’s Goneril and Fanny Kemple," New England Quarterly, 18 (December, 1945), 489-50°» finds some evi­ dence that suggests that Melville caricatured Fanny Kemple, a contemporary Shakespearen actress. He asserts that the use of the name Goneril has a double functions association with Shakespeare's uncomplimentary character; and second, a relation to the most discussed interpreter of Shakespeare’s of Melville’s generation. Edwin Fussell makes a systematic identification of actual people in the book. He finds Emerson in Chapters 36-37 and Thoreau in Chapters 37-41. He continues to say that Whitman is probably represented in Chapters 29-30 while Poe turns up in Chapter 36. Fussell conjectures that Hawthorne is Orchis in "The Story of China Aster," and Pitch represents Cooper or the spirit of Cooper, (pp. 313- 14) Fussell does not elaborate on his identifications but other critics do. Harrison Hayford in "Poe in The Confi­ dence-Man, " The Confidence-Mans His Masquerade, Ed. Her­ schel Parker (New York, 1971), p. 352, finds that in the character of the poet peddling a rhapsodical tract, Melville may have relied on what he knew of Poe. Hayford says that there is an accurate enough description of Poe’s manner and personal mien; there is a description of his end plight as Melville would have known it at the time and finally there is a dismissal of his pretension to reason. Daniel Hoffman identifies Mark Winsome as Emerson but argues that Egbert is not Thoreau but the Emersonian Man. (p. 304-305) Elizabeth S. Foster in the introduction to her edition of the novel argues that the evidence pro­ vided by the manuscript shows that Melville intended Win­ some and Egbert as different aspects of the same person. (p. lxxiv) She finds that Emerson is perhaps brought as the herb-doctor but certainly as the mystic Winsome and his practical disciple Egbert. Foster goes on to argue that in splitting the attack Melville dramatized a dualism in Emerson that has been seen by Lowell, (p. lxxiii) Her­ schel Parker in "Melville’s Satire of Emerson and Thoreau: An Evaluation of the Evidence," American Transcendental Quarterly, 7, Part 2 (Summer, 1970), 61-67, argues that Melville did know Thoreau and could have very possibly had him in mind in that portrait of Egbert. Finally, Edward Rosenberry asserts that Winsome and Egbert are Emerson and Thoreau but that the sharply focused caricatures are of the ideas and not of the persons, (p. 168) 4 Howard, p. 235« ^Leyda, p. 523. 152 ^Leyda, p. 528. Hawthorne’s journal entry for November 20, I856. "^Howard, p. 237. ®Leyda, p. 524. 9Ibid.. p. 525. •^The Letters of Herman Melville. Eds. Merril R. Davis and William H. Gilman (New Haven, i960), p. 142, the letter dated November 1851. 1:LLeyda, p. 529. 12Ibid.. p. 564. 154 LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

Arvin, Newton. Herman Melville. New York, 1950« Bach, Bert C. "Melville’s Confidence-Man: Allegory, Satire and the Irony of Intent." Cithara, 8 (May, 1969), 28-36. Baim, Joseph. "The Confidence-Man as ‘Trickster.’" Ameri­ can Transcendental Quarterly, No. 1 (First Quarter, 1969),81-83. Bergmann, Johannes Dietrich. "The Original Confidence Man." American Quarterly, 21 (Fall, 1969), 560-577. Berthoff, Warner. "Herman Melville: The Confidence-Man." Landmarks of American Writing. Ed. Hennig Cohen. New York, 1969. 121-133. ______. The Example of Melville. Princeton, 1962. Bewley, Marius. The Eccentric Design: Form in the Classic American Novel. New York, 1959. Blackmur, R. P. "A Critic’s Job of Work.” Five Approaches of Literary Criticism. Ed. Wilbur Scott. New York, 1968. 315-343. Bowen, Merlin. "Tactics of Indirection in Melville’s The Confidence-Man." Studies in the Novel, 1 (Winter, 1969), 401-420. ______. The Long Encounter: Self and Experience in the Writing of Herman Melville. Chicago, I960. Branch, Watson G. "An Anotated Bibliography." The Confi­ dence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971. Pp. 363-376. ______The Conf idenc e-Man: His Masquerade. Unpub- lished dissertation.. North Western University, June, 1970. ______. "The Mute as ’Metaphysical Scamp’." The Con­ fidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971. Pp. 316-319. Braswell, William. Melville’s Religious Thought. Durham, 1943. Brodtkerb, Paul, Jr. "The Confidence-Man: The Con-Man as Here." Studies in the Novel, 1 (Winter, 1969), 421-435. 155 Brouwer, Fred E. "Melville’s The Confidence-Man as Ship of Philosophers." Southern Humanities Review, 3 (Spring, 1969), 158-165. Browne, Ray B. Melville * s Drive to Humanism. Purdue Uni­ versity Studies, Lafayette, Indiana, 1971. Caraber, Andrew J., Jr. "Melville's The Confidence-Man." Explicator, 2a:Item 9. Cawelti, John G. "Some Notes on the Structure of The Confi­ dence-Man. " American Literature, 29 (November, 1957)» 278-286. Chase, Richard. Herman Melville, A Critical Study. New York, 1949. . "Melville’s Confidence-Man." The Kenyon Review, TTTWinter, 1949), 122-140. ______. The American Novel and Its Tradition. New York, 1957. Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. Baltimore, 1964. Drew, Philip. "Appearance and Reality in Melville's The Confidence-Man." E.L.H., 31 (December, 1964), 418-442. Dryden, Edgar A. Melville's Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the Truth. Baltimore, 1968. Dubler, Walter. "Theme and Structure in Melville's The Confidence-Man." American Literature, 33 (November, 1961), 307-319. Elliott, Robert C. The Power of Satire. Princeton, I960. Ellis-Fermer, Una. The Frontiers of Drama. Bungay, Suf­ folk, 1964. ______. Shakespeare the Dramatist. Ed. Kenneth Muir. New York, 1961. Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York, 1969. . Reflections: Essays on Modern Theatre. New York, 1971. Feidelson, Charles, Jr. Symbolism and American Literature. Chicago, 1969. 156

Fergusson, Francis. The Idea of a Theatre. Princeton, 1949 Fiedler, Leslie A. "Out of the Whole." The Nation, 169 (November 19, 1949), 494-495. Finkelstein, Dorothee Metlitsky. Melville * s Orienda. New Haven, 1961. Franklin, H. Bruce. The Wake of the Gods» Melville * s Mythology. Stanford, 1963. Fuller, Roy. "Introduction." The Confidence-Man» His Mas­ querade . London, 1948, pp. v-xiii. Fussell, Edwin. Frontier» American Literature and the American West. Princeton, 1965. Gale, Robert. Plots and Characters in the Fiction and Narra tive Poetry of Herman Melville. Hamden, Connecticut, 1969. Grauman, Lawrence, Jr. "Suggestions on the Future of The Confidence-Man." Papers on English Language and Litera­ ture, 1 (Summer, 1965),257-249. Gross, John J. "Melville's The Confidence-Man» the Problem of Source and Meaning." Bulletin of the Modern Language Association of Helsinki, 60 (September 25, 1959), 299- 310. Guetti, James. The Limits of Metaphor» A Study of Melville Conrad and Faulkner. Ithaca, 1967. Hayford, Harrison. "Poe in The Confidence-Man." The Confi­ dence-Man» His Masquerade. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971, PP. 354-353. Hayman, Allen. "The Real and the Original» Herman Mel­ ville’s Theory of Prose Fiction." Modern Fiction Studies, 8 (Autumn, 1962), 211-232. « Hetherington, Hugh W. Melville's Reviewers» British and American 1846-1891. Chapel Hill, 1961. Higgins, Brian. "Mark Winsome and Egbert: ’In the Friendly Spirit’." The Confidence-Man. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971, PP. 339-343. Highet, Gilbert. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton, 1962. Hillway, Tyrus, "Melville and the Spirit of Science." The South Atlantic Quarterly, 48 (January, 1949), 77-88. 157 Hoffman, Daniel. Form and Fable in American Fiction. New York, 1965. Holman, C. Hugh. A Handbook to Literature. Indianapolis, 1972. Horsford, Howard C. "Evidence of Melville’s Plans for a Sequel to The Confidence-Man." The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed, Herschel Parker. New York, 1971» pp. 356-360. Howard, Leon. Herman Melville: A Biography. Berkeley, 1951 Howe, Irving. "The Confidence-Man." Tomorrow, 8 (May, 1949), 55-57. Ishag, Saada. "Herman Melville as an Existentialist: An Analysis of Typee, Mardi, Moby Dick, and The Confidence- Man. " The Emporia State Research Studies, 14 (December, 196^5), y-^i.------Jaster, Frank. "Melville’s Cosmopolitan: The Experience of Life in The Confidence-Man: His Pflasquerade." Southern Quarterly, 8 (January, 1970), 201-210, Karcher, Carolyn Lury. "The Story of Charlemont: A Drama­ tization of Melville’s Concepts of Fiction in The Con- fidence-Man: His Masquerade." Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 21 (June, 1966), 73-84. Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form. New York, 1953. ______. Philosophy in a New Key. New York, 1951. ______. Problems of Art. New York, 1957. Leyda, Jay. The Melville Log. New York, 1951. Lewis, R. W. B. "Afterward." The Confidence-Man. New York, 1964, 261-276. Liberman, M. M. and Edward E. Foster. A Modern Lexicon of Literary Terms. Glenview, Illinois, 1968. Long, Raymond. The Hidden Sun: A Study of the Influence of Shakespeare on the Creative Imagination of Herman Melville. Unpublished dissertation. U.C.L.A., 1965. Magaw, Malcoln 0. "The Confidence-Man and Christian Deity: Melville’s Imagery of Ambiguity." Explorations of Literature, Louisiana State University Studies, 18 (1966), 81-99. 158

Male, Roy R. "The Story of the Mysterious Stranger in American Fiction." Criticism, 3 (Fall, 1961), 281-294. Mason, Ronald. The Spirit Above the Dust: A Study of Herman Melville. London, 1951. Matthiessen, F. 0. American Renaissance. New York, 1968. McCarthy, Paul. "Affirmative Elements in The Confidence-Man." American Transcendental Quarterly, 7» Part 2 (Summer, 1970), 56^61; Melville, Herman. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. New York, 1857. . The Confidence-Man. Ed. Hennig Cohen. New York, "ÏW?. The C onf id e ne e-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Eliza- beth S. Foster. New York, 1954. ____ _. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. H. Bruce Franklin. Indianapolis, I967. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Her- schel Parker. New York, 1971. ____ . Great Short Works of Herman Melville. Ed. Warner Berthoff. New York, 1970. ____ . "Hawthorne and His Mosses," Billy Budd and Other Pieces, ed. Raymond W. Weaver. New York, T963» PP. 123-143. ______. Pierre. New York, 1964. Metcalf, Eleanor Melville. Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle. Cambridge, 1953. Miller, James E., Jr. A Reader * s Guide to Herman Melville. New York, 1962. Miller, Perry. The Raven and the Whale. New York, 1956. Mitchell, Edward. "From Action to Essence: Some Notes on the Structure of Melville's The Confidence-Man." American Literature. 40 (March, 1968), 27-37. Mumford, Lewis. Herman Melville. New York, 1929. Oates, J. G. "Melville and the Manichean Illusion." Texas Studies in Literature, 4 (Spring, 1962), 117-129. 159 O'Connor, William Van. "Melville on the Nature of Hope." University of Kansas City Review, 22 (December, 1955), 123-130. Oliver, Egbert S. "Melville's Goneril and Fanny Kemble." New England Quarterly, 18 (December, 1945), 489-500» Parker, Herschel. "Melville’s Satire of Emerson and Thoreau: An Evaluation of the Evidence." American Tr anse endental Quarterly, 7, Part 2 (Summer, 1970), 6I-67. ______. "’The Story of China Aster’: A Tentative Expli- cation." The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971» PP. 353-356. ______. "The Metaphysics of Indian-hating." The Confi­ dence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971, PP. 323-331. ______. The Recognition of Herman Melville. Ann Arbor, I967. Pearce, Roy Harvey. "Melville’s Indian-Hater: A Note on a Meaning of The Confidence-Man." P.M.L.A., 57 (December, 1952), 942-948. Pommer, Henry F. Milton and Melville. Pittsburgh, 1950. Porte, Joel. The Romance in America: Studies in Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and James. Middletown, 1969. Reeves, Paschel. "The 'Deaf Mute’ Confidence Man; Mel­ ville's Imposter in Action." Modern Language Notes, 75 (January, i960), 18-20. Reynolds, Michael S. "The Prototype for Melville’s Confi­ dence-Man. " P.M.L.A., 86 (October, 1971), 1009-1013. Rosenberry, Edward H. Melville and the Comic Spirit. Cam­ bridge, 1955. ____ . "Melville’s Ship of Fools." P.M.L.A., 75 (December, i960), 604-608. Scott, Wilbur (Ed.). Five Approaches of Literary Criticism. New York, 1968. Sedgwick, William Ellery. Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1945. Seelye, John. Melville: The Ironic Diagram. Evanston, Illinois, 1970. 160 Seelye, John. "Ungraspable Phantom: Reflections of Haw­ thorne in Pierre, and The Confidence-Man." Studies in the Novel, 1 (Winter, 1969), 436-443. Seltzer, Leon F. "Camus’s Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man." P.M.L.A., 82 (March, 1967)» 14-27. ______. The Vision of Melville and Conrad: A Comparative Study. Athens, Ohio, 1970. Shroeder, John S. "Sources and Symbols for Melville's Confidence-Man." The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade» Ed. Herschel Parker. New York, 1971» PP. 298-316. Smith, Paul. "The Confidence-Man and the Literary World of New York." Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 16 (March, 1962), 329-337. Sontag, Susan. "Against Interpretation." Against Inter­ pretation. New York, 1966. Stone, Geoffrey. Melville. New York, 1949. Thompson, Lawrence. Melville's Quarrel with God. Princeton, 1952. Tuveson, Ernest. "The Creed of The Confidence-Man." E.L.H., A Journal of English Literary History, 33 (June, 196£), 247-270. Wright, Nathalia. "Form as Function in Melville." P.M.L.A., 67 (June, 1952), 330-340. ______. Melville's Use of the Bible. New York, 1969.