the moral of the story

"Beyond any doubt Duyckinck considered Pierre immoral:  we know that from the review he later wrote of the expanded version that the Harpers published."
Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, Reading Melville's Pierre, 147

"The most immoral moral of the story, if it has any moral at all, seems to be the impracticability of virtue..."
(Review of Melville's Pierre in Duyckincks' Literary World, August 21, 1852)

 My tragedy is all true,—and if not quite serious, has, as is proper, its moral;—but rather, as I have alluded to the primitive tragedy, let that " future reader" here imagine the entry of Chorus, and their song to Freedom! That dumb beasts prefer death to slavery! Liberty lost, they can die without the excitement of the world's applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity! (It is not possible, I think, that the cub could have known that I would immortalize him.)
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," March 1853)

Below, the whole mockudrama as it originally appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger for March 1853.  This installment begins with a new and unique feature, a subheading with synopses of major episodes in italics.  The subheading shows that with the series winding down, the writer is getting ready to make a book of it, experimenting with italicized synopses for the table of contents.  The tale of the captured grizzly cub burlesques Greek tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet, while at the same time—as shown here—mimicking the vocabulary used in the hurtful review of Pierre in the New York Herald (September 18, 1852).  In the 1853 subheading, this incredible episode is titled:   Cub, a tragedy in three acts; same title appears in the table of contents for the 1857 book version, only with initial capital letters and without the italics:  Cub, a Tragedy in Three Acts.

Cub, a tragedy in three acts
March 1853

So there is a moral, after all.  And YOW what a moral!