Melville on Science: "The Lightning-Rod Man"

Abstract

A MAJORITY of critics have viewed the title character of Melville's The Lightning-Rod Man (1854) as a symbol of evangelical Christianity,' and one can easily see why. He not only accuses the unreceptive narrator of profanity and infidelity2 but also has the habit of incorporating biblical language into his sales pitch. Mine is the only true rod, he soberly maintains (p. 277). There is a problem, however, in treating Melville's lightning-king as an allegorical peddler of religion, for rather than relying chiefly upon pious accusations and scriptural allusions, the lightning-rod man typically fills his conversation with technical assertions regarding the phenomenon of lightning and the practical precautions most helpful in avoiding its dangers. In an allegorical assault on hard-core Protestantism, such remarks various and continual -would seem curiously out of place. Perhaps those critics who have dubbed the salesman religious, minimizing his obsession with matters of electricity, should reconsider the question of who that salesman is. One significant clue to his allegorical identity is a probable Melvilleian source-Benjamin Franklin's Letters and Papers