Symbol, Satire, and the Will to Communicate in Melville’s “The Apple-Tree Table”

Abstract

Melville never subscribed to symbolist theory unconditionally but kept regarding artistic communication as a crucial problem. While the overall symbolic structure especially of his later works creates an indefiniteness of meaning, various clues point to certain lines of specific meaning which the reader is not to miss. They do not explain the work as a whole yet they indicate that Melvillean complexity is not random but that it is the outcome of the symbolic discussion of specific problems. Thus, a number of clue-like references indicate that “The Apple-Tree Table” discusses ideas from the “Conclusion” of Walden. The analogies garret-mind-heaven and narrator-artist-(pseudo-)god suggested by these and other clues make the story appear as a demonstration of the ultimate ambiguity of factual and spiritual reality but also as a decisive indictment of current beliefs and of aspects of contemporary social life and, finally, as a demonstration of art as the later Melville saw it: the process of creating and destroying illusion.