The Piazza Tales Analysis

Hands down (or tortoise shell down, more likely) the story in which the setting is most important is "The Encantadas." In fact, the whole story is almost nothing but setting—so much so that it is...

"Benito Cereno" is one long authorial trick based on point of view. The story is told from the perspective of Amaso Delano…and as you eventually find out, Amaso Delano is extremely unreliable. He...

Melville was best known as a travel writer—it's what he was most popular for. People weren't all that into the weird allegory about the giant white whale, but they liked it when Melville did the...

"The Piazza" has little in the way of plot or character; even its setting is vague and misty. Almost all there is to it is a tone of dreamy, elaborate longing. The narrator longs for a piazza, and...

Melville loved him some Shakespeare, and he often writes like he's in a toe-to-toe poetry-a-thon with the Bard. You could just about declaim many of his sentences to the upper galleries:Battered an...

"The Piazza" was written for this collection; all of the other stories had already been published in Putnam's Magazine. So The Piazza Tales is in part a way to highlight the one new bit of the book...

The most interesting, and famous, ending in the book is the conclusion of "Bartleby". At the conclusion of the story, the narrator reveals that Bartleby may have been a clerk in the dead letter off...

The book is short, but many of the sentences are long, and flocks of allusions wander about with slow deliberation, like turtles determined to get in your way. There's no way around that turtle; th...

Since this is a collection of short stories, we're going to analyze the plot of just one story. Check out this analysis of "Benito Cereno" below.What Strange Ship Is This?Captain Delano comes onboa...

Since this is a collection of short stories, we're going to analyze the plot of just one story. Check out this analysis of "The Bell-Tower" below.The architect Bannadonna decides he wants to build...

Since this is a collection of short stories, we're going to analyze the plot of just one story. Check out this analysis of "Bartleby" below.Act IFrom the beginning of the story to the moment Bartle...

"Benito Cereno" is based on an actual incident in 1805; Amasa Delano was even the real name of the American Captain fooled (for nine hours!) by mutinous slaves. (Source.)Melville sold the rights to...

There is no sex in this book. There's hardly any romance. Even the turtles are chaste. The one exception is the never mentioned, barely-alluded to rape of Hunilla, but this is more a suggestion of...

Abraham (1.16)Adam (2.90, 5.71)Anak (6.1)—A giant in the Old Testament.Aries (1.32)Tower of Babel (6.4)Francis Barber (3.251)—Samuel Johnson's Jamaican servant; he helped with revisions of John...