Melville- The Confidence Man

Mardi Gras break has come and gone so it's time to get serious once again. This week the class is discussing Herman Melville's The Confidence Man. We will have a class discussion, exam, and essay in addition to this blog.

The book begins with an image of a sign above a barbershop on a boat. It reads, "No Trust," which basically means that the barber does not accept credit and wants payment immediately following his services. This is logical since the reason for his work is to provide for his family; by allowing a customer to leave without paying, he runs the risk of not being compensated for his work and being unable to support his family.

Subsequent chapters involve other characters who are rigid in their beliefs but are pursuaded to be more trusting. An example is Pitch, a man who has 15 years' experience with 35 slaves. He despises them because they steal, give him an attitude, require food, and hesitate to get out of bed in the morning. Pitch desires to find a machine that will do work for him, as none of these concerns exist with machines. However, after a lengthy conversation with a philosopher, he comes to realize that boys are like corn--both require cultivation and will not become great if neglected. He eventually decides to purchase another boy as an "experiment."

Other accounts of characters (including a medicine man and an herb doctor) agreeing to be more trusting occur before the end of the book, where the barber is revisited. A persistent customer badgers him about removing the sign outside his shop while he receives a shave. He finally succeeds in convincing the barber to trust people. This trust in fellow mankind--this notion that there is virtue in all men--seems to be both a common theme as well as a moral of Melville's book. It therefore stands as a sort of conduct manual for how we should live our own lives. However, the book may also be read as a satirical account of placing too must trust in people. Different characters speak in each chapter, but there is always one who convinces another to take on his own position on a certain topic. It can be argued that these characters are all the same--the devil taking on different forms to manipulate people. At one point the text says that a butterfly is a caterpillar in a "gaudy cloak" of wings which disguise his true wormy form. The book's subtitle, "His Masquerade," also supports this idea of deception.

So there are several different ways to analyze this novel, but in any case it is very different from other novels of its time.