Autobiographically, it is about Melville s search for a savior-friend and his ultimate disappointment. With this writing the narrator can convey his exaggerated sense of the length of his journey and the weariness with which he proceeds. Ironically, Dillingham sees her as therapeutic for the narrator because through her he realizes the horror of his own situation. Thus this is a story of language. Both Blandmour and the guide continually use labels, names and tags to convince the narrators that all is right in the world.
Man is seen as a victim.
In Ezekiel, the chosen people of Israel defeat Gog, a savage leader and personification of evil, and God commands the Israelites to collect all the ravenous beasts from field and air to eat the slain enemy. The references of cannibalism suggest that the poor of Guildhall have regressed so far that they are more animal than human, more Goglike than Godlike. Dillingham states that Melville had an instinctive disgust for a mob, because it represented to him all the evil man is capable of. He based the mob scene in the story after the 1863 draft riots he witnessed in New York. He states that in all areas Melville rejects the idea of clear opposites in favor of terrible sameness.