Form Without Boundaries - An Interpretation of the Structure in Herman Melville"s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Form Without Boundaries

  Melville"s The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade has generally been regarded as  a failure of form. It has also been read as a satire against American culture. Critics prone to read The Confidence- Man with such a disapproving eye tend to see those unlikely aspects of the novel as symptomatic of a failed author. Against these dis-commendable views of the work, this essay argues that the form of The Confidence-Man is not a "failure of form　; it is simply dictated by the fiction"s material rather than by the troubled mind of the author. The primary determinant of the novel"s form is the shifting actions and ideas of the multi-formed confidence man. Thus, The Confidence-Man is another variation in terms of the forms of Melville"s novels, which assume an organic aesthetic as its form corresponds with the multiple implications of the fiction"s material. In addition to, or because of the continuity between material and form in The Confidence-Man, there is the tendency to openendedness and ambiguity in the structure of the novel. However, this seemingly disturbing quality of the form is not to be interpreted as a manifestation of the author"s frustrated psyche or his lack of narrative techniques. Instead, it should be taken as an outcome of the author"s own predilection for the organic aesthetic derived from his anti-essentialist vision of art and literature. This essay also contends that The Confidence-Man is by no means a satirical work against American culture by pointing out that it provides no possible criteria for moral judgment. Nor is the novel a display of the author"s pessimistic view of humanity, considering that Melville chose to set the novel on April Fool"s Day.