The Eastern vs. the Western in The Confidence Man

Abstract

Although the critics of Melville have been divided in their opmion upon the merits of The Confidence Man, it seems that on one point there is agreement: that the novel is' not a great success as a work of fiction. The greatest failure is to be found in the form of the novel, which is, in other words, his method of uniting ideas with action and character. We are almost bound to agree with Daniel G. Hoffman who says in his Form and Fable in American Fiction, "Melville had led himself into a maze of nondramatizable speculation to which none of the traditions he could make use of were fitted to give adequate form . ...He attempts allegory without a superstructure of belief, and dialectic without the possibility of resolution." Ivor Winters thinks the novel, with all its importance and impressiveness, "unsatisfactory as philosophy and tediously repetitious as narrative," and some critics go so far as to say that the novel remains unfinished. In spite of its failure in the form as a work of fiction, however, the book is a great success in its powerful satire and sharp criticism upon the human nature and society.