bears again

John W. Shroeder on bears and bear symbolism in The Confidence-Man:

“Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a feast of bear’s meat, and there, by strategm, ended them.” ... [quoting from chapter 26 of The Confidence-Man]

... The ill-fated feast of bear’s meat has it symbolic implications. The agent of the Black Rapids Coal Company confesses that his stock has recently undergone a slight devaluation. This depression of the stock he assigns to “the growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears.”
…. “Scoundrelly bears!"  [quoting from chapter 9]

When we make the proper allowance for the speaker, it becomes evident that the bear is the distrustful man; the man who has no confidence in the false, bright side of things; the only man in Melville’s universe who has a sporting chance against snakes, Indians, and confidence-men.

The Missouri bachelor was “somewhat ursine in aspect”; he sported “a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bearskin.”  He growled at the man with the plate like “Bruin in a hollow trunk.” [chapter 21]

The confidence-man, as we know, finally took in this bear, just as he [in the guise of Mocmohoc] took in the Wrights and the Weavers....

-- Sources and Symbols for Melville’s Confidence-Man, PMLA, LXVI [1951]: 377-8)

 Cub, a Tragedy in Three Acts

In crossing the Platte this morning, the grizzly bear cub came on the scene in his final act.

It will be remembered by the patient and attentive future reader of this dry and methodical narrative, that its first appearance on any stage, was in "high" tragedy—that the first act embraced an unusual amount of sanguinary incident—that an innocent brother, (or sister,) being ruthlessly slain, and the baffled lady-mother left (unceremoniously) full of towering and demonstrative rage,— the imprisoned hero himself sank overwhelmed,—or in a well-acted counterfeit of death, (and was borne off, remember, on a "real" horse). That in the next act, (and three acts shall do for the tragedy of my bear,—originally they had but one,—but that was at the sacrifice of a goat,) he came to life in a manner that might very well have been criticized as an overdone piece of stage-effect,—but that in fact, the spectators were much moved, and gave full credit to the dangerous passion of his howl.

To-day, then,—for I scorn anachronism— was performed the final act. The stage (wagon) was on "real water." Enraged at his wrongs, his losses, and his galling chain, the "robustious beast" acted in a ridiculous and unbearable manner; aye, ''tore his passion to tatters, to very rags,"—splinters; the stage (wagon) could not hold him: and finally in despair, he "imitated humanity so abominably," as to throw himself headlong, and so drown—or hang himself: (the author cannot decide which—even after a post mortem examination;—and so leaves the decision of this important point to the commentators).

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, Southern Literary Messenger 19 (March 1853) page 159 and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857) page 390.

For more on the mock tragedy of the bear cub, see the previous posts about high tragedies and about the goat and about the New York Herald review of Pierre and about the Literary World review of Pierre.

And the one about his howl.