In The Fiddler, the narrator meets a forty-year-old man named Hautboy. Hautboy is described as an overgrown child, always smiling and happy, always receptive to good humor, possessed of a good appetite and chubby body, and a person generally optimistic in outlook. The narrator notes that Hautboy's enthusiastic presence is contagious and uplifting. During the narrative, it develops that Hautboy was once a famous fiddle player of wide renown and many riches; however, such a life did not make Hautboy happy. Thus, Hautboy deliberately repositioned himself into obscurity and made his now-paltry income as a fiddle instructor. Nearly destitute and entirely unknown, Hautboy becomes the happy person the narrator meets. Many critics have pointed out that Hautboy's life mirrors Melville literary career—an early period of great success followed by a long period of literary failure such that Melville, like Hautboy, ends up unknown on the street.
FOLLOW BOOKRAGS:
