Confidence ManAt sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis.His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger.In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite steamer Fidele, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities, he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East; quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what purported to be a careful description of his person followed.So begins Herman Melville's "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade," his very last novel, published in 1857. Yes, yes, Billy Budd was published later, posthumously, but Confidence-Man was the last novel Melville wrote.It's a very strange book, and really most un-novel-like. It really comes across more as a series of vignettes, featuring a parade of swindlers, shysters, and snake-oil men coming and going aboard the faithful steamboat as it treks down the Mississippi. A black cripple protests accusations that his malady is less than genuine, a sick man is sold a dubious concoction, a Missouri Hoosier is promised the sale of a fine boy, and the registrar of the Black Rapids Coal Company sells some shares in what must surely be a fine organization. Conversations strut with references to Judeo-Christian mythology, double-entendres, and writers both contemporary and ancient. Caricatures of Cooper, Poe, Emerson and Thoreau get what they deserve.As the story progresses, it becomes less of a story. The reader is led to believe that every man professing philanthropy, charity and trust is not just a con-man but the same con-man, transforming himself before our eyes into whatever redolent flower might suit his next admirer.The black cripple, challenged of his authenticity, enumerates several avatars that might speak to his originality:"Oh yes, oh yes, dar is aboard here a werry nice, good ge'mman wid a weed, and a ge'mman in a gray coat and white tie, what knows all about me; and a ge'mman wid a big book too; and a yarb-doctor; and ge'mman in a yaller west; and ge'mman wid a brass plate; and a ge'mman in a wiolet robe; and a ge'mman as is a sodjer; and ever so many good, kind, honest ge'mmen more aboard what knows me and will speak forme, God bress ?em; yes, and what knows me as well as dis poor old darkie knows hisself, God bress him! Oh, find ?em, find'em..."Sure enough, we find these men engaged in their proclivities. A man with a weed in his hat makes an appearance, followed by a man in a gray coat and white tie. The man with a big book might be that registrar of the Black Rapids Coal Company, and certainly the herb doctor finds one willing to try his concoctions with full guarantee. The man with a brass plate around his neck sells a hypothetical boy, delivery in full in one week.But soon the reader will be perplexed. There is no man in a yellow vest, and no man in a violet robe, neither. The herb doctor wears a snuff-colored surtout, and another man wears a violet vest, and at least four passengers might play the role of soldier. The cripple may have gained too much confidence of the reader... and the seeds of doubt are sown. Perhaps the man with a weed is not the one with a weed in his hat, but the one who smokes weed instead. Perhaps the man with the big book is not the registrar, but any of three ministers wielding Bibles, who encourage all who listen to practice Charity and Faith, themselves wearing bands of white around their necks, and one positively identified as lamb-faced.The second half of the book instead belongs to The Cosmopolitan, sporting "vesture barred with various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt, while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently." The Cosmopolitan describes himself thusly, in tongue even more gaudy:"A cosmopolitan, a catholic man; who, being such, ties himself to no narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume, something of the various gallantries of men under various suns. Oh, one roam not over the gallant globe in vain. Bred by it, is a fraternal and fusing feeling. No man is a stranger. You accost anybody. Warm and confiding, you wait not for measure advances. And though, indeed, mine, in this instance, have met with no very hilarious encouragement, yet the principle of true citizen of the world is still to return good for ill. - My dear fellow, tell me how I can serve you."With that in mind, let us look at Confidence Man with renewed vigor and clear eyes. Is it at all possible that Black Guinea's list applies here as well, that most if not all of our cherished characters are engaged in one kind of masquerade or another?
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(Date Posted:06/23/2007 21:15:25)
Have Faith
We have no dearth of confidence games to choose from. The first con occurs in the past, and it is not shown to us, but told. How unusual for a visual medium. Kate reads Sawyer's letter:
Kate: Dear Mr. Sawyer, you don't know who I am, but I know who you are and I know what you done. You had sex with my mother and then you stole my dad's money all away. So he got angry and he killed my mother and then he killed himself, too.
Sawyer: Don't stop now, gettin' to the good part.
Kate: All I know is your name. But one of these days I'm going to find you and I'm going to give you this letter so you'll remember what you done to me. You killed my parents, Mr. Sawyer.
This confidence man is invisible.
The next game, chronologically speaking, is between Sawyer and his fresh marks, Jessica and David, some time before he's arrived on the Island. Sawyer, all grown up, plays the same game that stole his parents from him. Wearing a gray coat and a white-striped tie (which we see him put on while looking at a mirror) he makes to swindle $160,000 from them, earned from David's lumber company, through investment in Kingsfield Oil (no doubt related to Kingsfield University, a notorious dipoma-mill). Their money will triple in a week, or two, courtesy of the fine state of Louisiana, proclaims the seedy cosmopolitan as they wine and dine in an anonymous restaurant.
It is really quite funny, a Sawyer taking money from a lumber company. And even funnier, for when he gave his letter to Kate, he was chopping wood. Funnier still, for the eponymous Tom Sawyer was no stranger to the Mighty Mississippi. But this game does not end in laughs. Sawyer, now wearing a violet tie in the couple's home, spots the young boy of Jess and David, who asks them to read to him, and of course Sawyer is one who appreciates a good read. He says "no deal" and walks away.
This confidence man has lost his confidence. Oh where did the Confidence-Man go?
If you noticed, Sawyer left more than the money he planned to secure from this fine couple. He left behind the "seed" money he borrowed from the pool shark, a black man wearing a violet-striped shirt. He leaves it all in care of those for whom we waxes eloquent:
Sawyer: See, woman are easy -- a few cosmos, a couple of stunts they haven't seen between the sheets, and they think the scam's their idea. Now husbands, they need to touch the money, smell it -- believe that if they had the brass to put that suitcase in the trunk of their family sedan and speed away, they just might have a chance at being an honest-to-gosh outlaw.
That is, he left the money to a man with brass, and whose wife (who works a car dealership, a well-known bastion of faith and trust) is no angel:
Jessica: This isn't how is was supposed to work. You said that we were gon...
David: Said? What'd he say Jessica?
This Confidence Man seems to be quite adept at inhabiting a number of bodies.
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(Date Posted:06/23/2007 21:17:21)
Every Man a Con-Man
Back on the Island, the Confidence Man looks to steal nothing more than a kiss. After beating the thief who was rummaging through his stash, he discovers that Shannon is missing her inhalers and everyone thinks he has them. This man has brass, for he does nothing to dissuade anyone of their notions. All the more precious is that the man suspected of hoarding inhalers has in fact hoarded inhalants - his cigarettes appear many times, and Locke even reminds us of Sawyer's smoking predilections when he suggests to Sayid that a cigarette could be used to time-delay a fuse. (Spoiler: Locke is also a con-man. He cons Sayid into thinking that Sawyer brained him. Nice job, Locke!) The man with much weed, though, eventually succeeds in stealing a kiss, and gives nothing valuable in return.
This must surely be one of Sawyer's best examples of sowing confidence and mistrust. He gets so much of what he wants in this game. He satisfies his own self-loathing by eliciting torture from the man he fought only one day after they crashed on the Island, and loves it so much he proclaims it clears his sinuses - Sawyer obviously has no need of an asthma inhaler. The Confidence Man shifts, "becoming as is a sodjer", for Sayid is most definitely practiced in the arts of war and communication. Sayid cons himself, but twice over. Not only does he do what he said he'd promised never to do again, but he's able to maintain a veneer over it all: "What I did today, what I almost did, I swore to do never again. If I can't keep that promise, I have no right to be here... Someone has to walk the shore and map the island, see what else there is. I can't think of a better person to do it than the only one I trust." How can he still trust himself so soon after breaking a vow he made to himself?
Sawyer calls Sayid "Ali", a reference to the fighter Muhammed Ali who deals in violence. It's quite apt, for Sayid is Muslim and also quite adept in dealing out violence. He's also quite confident in his own assumptions. He's certain that Sawyer has the medicine, and whacks him with a pole unawares, as he was whacked the day before. Sawyer is tied to a bamboo tree, while Sayid whittles a few bamboo shoots down to their points with the brass-plated knife given to him by Locke, another whittler. Sayid only succeeds in making Sawyer the martyr, turning the poor boy's blue shirt plum with blood. Like the pool shark, Sayid knows about suffering. One might even be tempted to draw an analogy between this scene and the horrific images from Abu Ghraib splayed out on television screens some few months before this episode aired.
Sawyer is no prophet, but he taunts, "Is that all you got?" foreseeing only more violence. Sawyer also uses this line to goad Jack. Jack has more familiarity of keeping up appearances. He's willing to buy into the notion that he be a hero and a leader, but his actions in this episode bespeak darker truths well-hidden. Sure, Jack claims, "We're not savages..." But The Confidence-Man elicits from him a here-to-fore unseen violence, as he gives two well-placed blows to Sawyer while those who've followed him to the caves watch in horror, perhaps shaking their faith. Later, he is the one who makes the decision to give Sayid permission to use torture to force Sawyer to hand over what he doesn't, in fact, have; when Kate protests, Jack disavows any self-responsibility: "This was Sawyer's choice, not mine." Another thing Jack can't keep hidden is his feelings for Kate, for his voice cracks when he asks Kate if it's true that she and Sawyer have "a connection." Jack is better at conning himself than others.
Jack is more the mineral doctor than the herb doctor; the latter title properly falls to Sun, who figures out that eucalyptus might be obtained from the "jungle of mystery" and applied to clear the passages constricting Shannon's throat. Of course she goes behind her husband's back and elicits the help of Michael, the only one who knows she speaks English. She can't ask Jin, for she's not supposed to know what's actually going on with Shannon, lest he discover that she knows more than he thinks. She'd rather Jin think she's flirting with Michael than think she knows another language.
Shannon, who wears a yellow camisole, shows a different side of herself now that she's robbed of her faith in breathing. Don't forget, she's been hiding the fact that she uses an inhaler to deal with her asthma for over a week, so if anything, Shannon has more faith in not breathing. Jack suggests as much, that her panic and anxiety may be more causative of her difficulties than her condition. Shannon begs her brother Boone to stay with her, to not leave her alone, and of course he complies, even though he's only been belittled and shamed by her for the past week. We have to wonder about Boone, too: His faulty assumption that Sawyer has the inhalers is the root of this fiasco. And did you notice, while interacting with the good doctor, he keeps urgently suggesting that they get Shannon's inhalers, which only upsets her more? And this from a man who's supposedly trained to be a lifeguard? Ah well. In Shannon's last scene, we see her draped in a purple blanket as she recovers under the ministrations of the potent eucalyptus.
Shannon's labors in breathing evoke the difficulties in breathing during labor, and Claire must certainly be close to giving birth. She and the lamb-faced Charlie hang up some freshly washed garments - one yellow, one purple - and discuss the foods they miss so much, in similar tone to Sawyer's suggestion of eating a chocolate sundae off of Jessica's belly before he spills his cash all over her floor. But I digress.
Charlie is convinced that Claire must move to the caves with him, to get off the flea-infested beach and out of the sun. Claire agrees to do so if Charlie procures for her some peanut butter, apparently less cherished among most Australians. Charlie goes hunting for peanut butter and approaches Hurley, the biggest man among the survivors, uncharitably suggesting that he might be hoarding food. Hurley vehemently denies the accusation, but given all the charades of this episode, can we truly believe that he's lost a notch in his belt? (SPOILER: Hurley does hoard food. Con-men all, I say.) We can't say, but Charlie comes away empty-handed. And then he pulls a magnificent stroke of confidence: Wielding an empty jar, he swirls his dirty finger in the creaminess of invisible peanut butter, exclaiming it the very best he's had. Claire goes along, indulging in the sticky delight, and accedes to the deal she's made and prepares to move to the caves.
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(Date Posted:06/23/2007 21:18:09)
It's About Bunnies
Throughout their interactions, we catch the smallest glimpses of a big book being read by Claire. It is, in fact, "Rick Romer's Vision of Astrology", a fictitious book named after one of Lost's set decorators. As there is little to learn from a book that does not, in fact, exist, we must turn to the big book that Sawyer constantly reads, Watership Down. Watership Down, as it turns out, features a couple of confidence games in its passages. In one story, the ostensible leader of the Honeycomb warren, Hazel, elicits the help of his faster companions (for Hazel is lamed earlier in the story) to trick the dog of a nearby farm to chase them back home, in hopes of disrupting the plans of General Woundwort to occupy their home.
A more interesting ruse is perpetuated by Bigwig, a surly burly rabbit with a funny tuft of hair on his head. Bigwig infiltrates Woundwort's warren, Efrafa, by posing as former guard from a warren which had been destroyed some weeks prior. Well, it's true that he actually was a guard at that warren, but his purposed are anything but wanting to tag along. Bigwig enters Efrafa and quickly establishes himself as officer material. Secretly, he organizes a number of the does to escap, for the Honeycomb warren has no females. The daring plan barely succeeds.
In the rubric of Watership Down, the confidence game is played with blessings. Rabbits are well known for their tricksy ways, and believe such to be quite natural. Throughout the book, one of the rabbits, a storyteller, regales the rest of the warren with tales of El-ahrairah, a mythological rabbit of ancient yore who is as a deity to all rabbits, and who constantly employs all manner of confidence games to thwart the Thousand Enemies of rabbits. El-ahrairah would just as soon moon the sun-god Frith than beg for his blessings, and such is how the bottoms of rabbits were blessed with great speed and agility. El-ahrairah steals King Darzin's Lettuce by pissing on his food to make him ill, then posing as a doctor tells him to get rid of all his greens. El-ahrairah is the sacred trickster among rabbits.
In one story, King Darzin has had enough of El-ahrairah and makes to spite the crafty rabbit. Darzin's troops guard all the rabbit holes of El's people, a siege under which they begin to starve. El-ahrairah, who has run out of tricks, seeks the help of The Black Rabbit of Inle, who is fear and everlasting darkness as much as he is a rabbit.
El-ahrairah proposes to give his life for the safety of his people, but the Black Rabbit refuses. Instead they wager on a game of bob-stones, but El-ahrairah loses, and with that loss loses his whiskers and tail, which he can only replace with clematis and ragwort. The next evening the same wager is made over a game of storytelling, but El-ahrairah loses, and with that loss loses his ears, which he can only replace with two good, big dock leaves. The next evening he tries to catch the deadly White Blindness from a sick rabbit under the auspices of the Black Rabbit, that he might infect King Darzin's troops, but again he is foiled, for that disease is passed on by fleas jumping from rabbit-ear to rabbit-ear, and El-ahrairah has only leaves with which to hear.
The Black Rabbit of Inle finally takes pity on El-ahrairah and proceeds to drive El-ahrairah's enemies to madness. But when El-ahrairah returns after much wandering to the warren, generations have passed and no one remembers a thing from such ancient history. As El-ahrairah ponders his strange fate, Lord Frith approached.
"Are you angry, El-ahrairah?" asked Lord Frith.
"No, my lord," replied El-ahrairah, "I am not angry. But I have learned that with creatures on loves, suffering is not the only thing for which one may pity them. A rabbit who does no know when a gift has made him safe is poorer than a slug, even though he may think otherwise himself."
And Lord Frith gave El-ahrairah a new tail, whiskers and ears, made of starlight.
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(Date Posted:06/23/2007 21:20:16)
Saint Sawyer
Sawyer: So what is it about that guy... Jack. What is it about him makes you all... weak in the loins?
Kate: Do you try to be a pig, or does it just come naturally?
Sawyer: So, he's a doctor, right? Yeah, the ladies dig the doctors. Hell, give me a couple of band aids, a bottle of peroxide, I could run this island too.
Kate: You're actually comparing yourself to Jack?
Sometimes the lines from a previous story are more apt for a subsequent one, and such is the case here. Maybe we're reading Sawyer all wrong. Maybe he is a hero, and we just haven't seen it. After all, the king of confidence games, El-ahrairah himself, is actually a hero.
Let's see how this plays out. Has Sawyer shown us anything to suggest that he has heroic qualities within? Perhaps. He held off on conning Jess and David when he saw himself in their little boy. In the second Pilot episode, he saves Sayid's group from a polar bear, shooting it at least four or eight times. We might charitably call this Sawyer's Call to Adventure.
But of course Sawyer is Reluctant, for he believes in every man for himself, the call of the Wild and all that. But lo and behold, a White Rabbit comes to him, in the form of a story that he has the means to save another's life, that is, a story that he has Shannon's asthma inhalers. Sawyer doesn't, but goes down the rabbit hole anyways, bearing the torture of Sayid for one precious kiss. It's a kiss he asks for three times - when he first hears the story, then after Kate reads his letter, and finally after Sayid's torture. Not unlike Charlie asking for his drugs three times. Kate becomes his mentor, giving him that kiss which indicates that he is not to be completely loathed and clothed in self-hatred.
But Sawyer has no boon with which to save anyone, and quickly receives a shot to his chops from the woman he's conned. So maybe it might be better to rise to Kate's challenge, and finally compare Sawyer with Jack, for we might better see the man through a mirror. We may have another set of mirror-twins on our hands.
Jack moves to the caves, while Sawyer stays on the beach, but Sawyer makes his home in Jack's old digs. Sawyer proclaims that possession is nine-tenth the law, and accuses Jack of perpetuating a "commie share-fest" at the caves. Sawyer claims to be of The Wild, putting Jack in the position of Civilization, but Jack is the one who signs off on savaging a man with no evidence. Sawyer is quite plain in his affections for Kate, while Jack pains himself to suppress his longings. Sawyer distracts Jack from attending to Shannon, which ultimately gives Sun the opportunity to save her with an herbal remedy. Sawyer has called Jack a "cowboy", but likens himself more to an "outlaw". Sawyer is the cantankerous "Man" to Jack's hard-working "Chico." And if Jack is the one who has "Jedi" moments, does that indicate the Sawyer is more of the Sith?
"The anti-hero ventures forth from the bourgeois state into the underworld of pariahs and felons. Fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive defeat is won. The anti-hero comes back from his adventure with the power to avenge himself on the bourgeois state and the society of reprobates which he rejects summarily because they reject him." -W. F. Sohlich, MLN, Vol. 89, No. 4, French Issue (May, 1974), pp. 641-653
Jack's Heroic Journey calls on him to undergo separation, initiation, integration and rebirth. If Sawyer is on the AntiHeroic Journey, he can look forward to attachment, regression, alienation and death. The flawed hero is basically good, but he has certain weaknesses which may be his undoing, which he has to overcome or integrate to make his way on the hero's path. The anti-hero is basically bad, but has certain charming or colorful character traits which elicit from us a certain appeal, whether it's his contempt for the hypocrisy of conventional heroes and society or his ability to escape from social constrictions and crushing authority.
But maybe Sawyer is not the AntiHero. Or is Sawyer the Shadow, the dark desires that Jack doesn't want to acknowledge in himself? Is Sawyer a mentor by eliciting Jack's violence? Is he a Threshold Guardian who distracts Jack from the Special World that holds the magic remedy that might heal Shannon? Maybe he is the Trickster, who keeps the Hero off-balance by hiding allegiances and motives. Perhaps all of this is only to shows that Sawyer is indeed the Shapeshifter after all, the consummate Confidence Man who sheds skin after skin, showing every face and manner of dress but his own.
Regardless, remember this: In Jack's episode, "White Rabbit," the first shot is of young Jack's Opening Eye. We get no "opening eye" of Sawyer in this fist shot of this episode - instead, we get a shot of the object of Sawyer's eye walking up the beach with a bunch of green bananas on her back, followed later by a view of Oceanic Airline's eye symbol on a sheet of glass that somehow survived the plane wreck; we finish Sawyer's eye-opening experiences with Sayid threatening to cut out his right one.
Sawyer's Letter
One person is able to see through Sawyer's masquerade. Kate calls him out, for she has an eye keen enough to observe that Sawyer's story doesn't quite add up. She pulls out the letter he forced her to read:
Kate: I read it again, and then again, because I've been trying to figure out why you beat up Boone instead of just telling him you didn't have his sister's medication. Why you pretended to have it anyway. The thing that I keep coming back around to is that you want to be hated. Then I looked at the envelope. America's bicentennial, Knoxville, Tennessee. You were just a kid, 8, maybe 9 years old.
Sawyer: Kate.
Kate: This letter wasn't written to you. You wrote this letter. You're name's not Sawyer, is it?
Sawyer: It was his name. He was a confidence man. Romanced my momma to get to the money, wiped them out clean, left a mess behind. So I wrote that letter. I wrote it knowing one day I'd find him. But that ain't the sad part. When I was 19, I needed six grand to pay these guys off I was in trouble with. So I found a pretty lady with a dumb husband who had some money. And I got them to give it to me. How's that for a tragedy? I became the man I was hunting. Became Sawyer. Don't you feel sorry for me. Get the hell out. Get out!
Now we see why Sawyer called off his con of Jess and David - because the boy reminded him of himself, of his sadness, of his humanity. The tragedy is that he has become the man he hates, and his self-hatred and desire for vengeance know no bounds. That's about all he has to hang on to. Sawyer does not burn his letter, and he does not let go of his pain. We know now his name isn't Sawyer; perhaps we ought to call him Ishmael.
"Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
