Blind Faith in Progress and the Loss of Ideals in American society in the XIX century

Blind Faith in Progress and the Loss of Ideals in American society in the XIX century.

Abstract

        The passengers aboard the Fidéle, in “The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade” (1857) according to the narrator “all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man” (CM 58): they are a fundraiser for a shelter, a coal company president, a doctor, a representative of the society of hired workers, and a wandering cosmopolitan, as Cole mentions “__ the young strangers’ ideals are identical to America’s, their class in some sense representative of the nation as a whole” (Cole 396), somehow all these could be characteristic representatives of the American society of the middle of the XIX century. In the novel, Melville depicts a masquerade, endless concealment of identity in order to gain “trust”. One of the characters, the Missouri bachelor Pitch, encounters three different disguises of the Confidence Man, and as a Philosophical Intelligence Office representative, the Confidence Man could win his trust by recommending him a boy to work on his farm. Despite Pitch’s initial aggressive statements that he prefers “some sort of machine to do [his] work” (CM 223), the P.I.O. agent cites that he allegedly made “a careful analytical study of man, conducted, too, on a quiet theory” (CM 230), and Pitch agrees “for the sake purely of a scientific experiment, [he] will try that boy” (CM 242). By focusing on this interaction, this paper aims to investigate how Melville uses this encounter between these two characters, through scientific and philosophical arguments, to criticize excessive and illogical faith in progress, science, and human nature.

        This paper examines the dialogue of Pitch with the Philosophical Intelligence Office (P.I.O.) representative starting from  Elizabeth Duquette’s notes in “The Confidence-Man between Genres”, Jonathan Cook’s analysis of Pitch in “Satirical Apocalypse, Biographical Models: Literary Brethren” and Cole’s work titled “At the Limits of Identity: Realism and American Personhood in Melville's “Confidence-Man”.  The aim of this paper is to explore Pitch and the P.I.O. agent’s characters from various perspectives. Another important aspect will be the P.I.O. agent’s ability to manipulate misanthrope Pitch’s beliefs and reveal his gullibility. Such dialogue is represented as Melville’s criticism regarding the discrepancy between the proclaimed ideals and the actual reality.