Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

On Th e Road 139
person with extraordinary, buoyant, all-purpose faith and its accompanying
energy can radiate this inner state to others. He is, in the
purest sense of the term, a confi dence man, a sharer of faith. In his
presence something almost sacred takes place. But since there is no
sacramental ground for him, no elevating offi cial ritual, his touches
of divinity are encased in more squalid circumstances, and he is as
likely to appear in a carnival as in a church. He is often a cheat as
well as a prophet. What is the appeal of the auctioneer’s incantation,
the carnie’s fast talk, the medicine show’s razzle-dazzle, the booster’s
verbal magic? We enjoy such performances even while we doubt the
showman’s specifi c promises, for they refresh the mind and renew
the world. Th ey excite and exhilarate us. Perhaps the tonic will not
cure warts, and perhaps the tract of land is actually two feet under
water, but the real promise is of another kind. If we share the con
man’s faith, allow ourselves to ride his words into his imagined
world, we may literally be transported and thus tap a corresponding
source of energy within ourselves.
Such free fl owing of energy can only be temporary, but even when
we fall back to our mundane reality and fi nd his promises not literally
fulfi lled, we may still recollect the state to which the confi dence man
lifted us. Th is is why Nick Carraway maintains his loyalty to Gatsby,
why Huck Finn doesn’t give up on Tom Sawyer, why Arthur Mervyn’s
disillusionment does not end his ties to Welbeck, why Mark Twain
couldn’t simply laugh off Colonel Beriah Sellers. And it is in releasing
such inward energy—by nature beyond good and evil, outside cultural
bounds—that the modern confi dence man most clearly approximates
the archaic trickster. But the pressures toward doubt and diminishment
are so great in the contemporary world that the shared moments
of energy get abruptly cut off . Th e con man becomes in turn more
desperate to recover his own faith and more extreme in his gestures of
trying to share it. Even the most enthusiastic of his disciples fi nd good
reasons for discouragement. Th e fate of the contemporary booster
shows what has happened to the old American promise-land spirit.
NEAL CASSADY
Th e personal energy that the confi dence man can share has been
particularly infectious for Americans in the closely related forms of
fast movement and fast talk. Both were carried to new extremes in