A confidence man and his equally shifty victims are characters in a satirical allegory that is meant to expose what Melville saw as the smug, mindless materialism of mid-century America. The events take place on a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day, reinforcing Melville's remark (in a letter to his friend Henry Savage) that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of a joke. Melville's 1857 black comedy was inspired by the story of a New York City swindler he read about in a newspaper. His 10th book in 11 years, it was to be the last of his prose fictions published in his lifetime.
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