The Fidèle contains multitudes, and with that comes the fancy and not so fancy. Melville's lingering descriptions of who wore what are less about red-carpet gossip and more about assessing class difference and hardship. In The Confidence-Man, we meet people who are down on their luck, and we get a bleak look at how most of the crowd treats them. They're a reminder of harsh reality in a text that is pretty wink-wink, nudge-nudge about a lot of its messages.
Questions About Poverty
- Which characters have choices or actions limited by their clothes? Which characters seem unencumbered regardless of what they're wearing?
- Who loses the most money on this ship? Who earns the most?
- What's the value of a dollar, and how can you tell what's worth what?
- How do powerful characters treat the poor in this novel?
Chew on This
Poverty in The Confidence-Man is just window-dressing, and no real commentary is being made about our human duties toward one another.
Melville is arguing that poverty is a sign of a damaged society, so those who believe well of their country have a duty to serve others in order to fix that society.