Résumé
Résumé de The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love satire, dialogue and puzzles about human nature, and anyone curious about Melville beyond his sea stories.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Confidence-Man is a novel by Herman Melville, published in 1857. It was the last novel he brought out in his lifetime, and it came after the poor reception of his earlier books, including Moby-Dick. The whole story takes place on a single day, April Fools' Day, on a Mississippi steamboat called the Fidèle. The boat is traveling down the river toward New Orleans, and its passengers are a crowd of strangers from every walk of American life.
The book gives you a strange, sharp comedy about trust. On the deck and in the cabins, a series of men appear and ask the passengers for something. Sometimes they want money, and sometimes they want only belief. Each passenger must decide whom to trust, and what trust is worth. The word confidence in the title means both faith in another person and the swindler's trick of winning it. Melville never tells you plainly who is honest and who is not. You have to watch, listen and judge, just as the passengers do. Let us start with the stranger who appears at the landing.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A mute stranger arrives on April Fools' DayFree
- 2A beggar tests the kindness of the crowd
- 3Strangers ask for money, and people give it
- 4Pitch the Missourian refuses to be fooled
- 5The cosmopolitan and the test of friendship
- 6What the book is about and how it is told
Point clé 1 sur 6
A mute stranger arrives on April Fools' Day
The novel opens at a landing in the American river country on the first of April. A crowd is gathering to board the Fidèle, a steamboat bound down the Mississippi. Among the travelers is a stranger dressed in cream colors, who seems unable to speak or hear. He has no luggage worth mentioning and no friends to see him off, and he looks pale, mild and out of place.
The stranger carries a slate and writes on it, and what he writes concerns charity. He copies out lines about how charity thinks no evil, believes all things and hopes all things. The people around him do not take this kindly. Some laugh at him, and some treat him as a nuisance. A barber's notice nearby, which speaks of trust being banished from the shop, sets up the theme in a comic way before anyone has said a word about it.
This opening scene matters because it sets the question that runs through the whole book. Is the stranger a holy innocent, a fool, or a trickster playing a part? Melville gives hints in both directions. The crowd mocks gentleness, and the stranger offers it anyway, so we start to wonder who is really being tested.
The scene also fixes the tone. The language is slightly mocking, as if a sermon were being read in a theater. You are being asked to watch closely, and the date on the calendar tells you that someone may be making fools of everyone. From this point the stranger drops out of sight, and other figures take over the stage.
That opening also teaches you how to read the rest. Appearances in this book are never plain, and each new face arrives with a story that may be true or may be bait. Keep the cream-colored stranger in your mind, because later scenes seem to echo him.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- The man in cream colors
- A silent stranger who writes about charity on a slate, leaving his fellow passengers uncertain about him.
- Black Guinea
- A beggar with crippled legs whose appeals for kindness draw both generosity and suspicion from fellow passengers.
- Pitch
- A suspicious Missouri bachelor who distrusts his fellow travelers and bargains hard with a smooth talker.
- Frank Goodman
- A cheerful, talkative passenger who calls himself a citizen of the world and invites strangers into friendship.
- Charlie Noble
- A genial fellow passenger who shares wine with Frank Goodman and discusses friendship and suspicion.
- Mark Winsome
- A lofty philosopher and Egbert's teacher who speaks beautifully about trust and friendship.
- Egbert
- Mark Winsome's disciple, who repeats his teacher's detached ideas when confronted with a friend's needs.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 96,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 6 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
What is The Confidence-Man about?
It follows a single day on a Mississippi steamboat, where strangers ask passengers for money and belief. Melville uses these meetings to explore trust, charity and fraud in the America of the 1850s.
Why is it called The Confidence-Man?
Confidence means both faith in another person and the con artist's trick of winning that faith. The title points to a swindler who earns trust and then uses it, and to the way the book blurs both meanings.
Is the confidence man one person or many?
Readers disagree. The book offers a series of smooth strangers who may be one man in changing costumes or several different men. Melville leaves the question open on purpose.
When was The Confidence-Man written and published?
Melville published it in 1857. It was the last novel he brought out in his lifetime, and it was not well received at first. Later critics have given it far more attention.