Unknown Power, Impotentiality in Herman Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities

Pierre breaks the rules of convention and acquires the 'potential not to do.' To transform the traditional hero into the new potential subject, Pierre moves from his hometown, Saddle Meadows, New York City to the dungeon of the city prison and creates three different relationships that symbolize what ideology and principles repress his mind and behavior and how he handles them. Firstly, in Saddle Meadows, Pierre has a narcissistic relationship with his mother, Mary, who teaches him the principles of American manhood and forces him to be docile: he has to obey Mary's order that a man should be a gentleman. Therefore, since he does not know his potential, he does not create his own work and is involved in plagiarism. Secondly, in New York City, Pierre creates an associated relationship with Isabel, his half-sister, who represents an ambiguous and mysterious character and has the 'potential not to do' that leads Pierre to destroys the beliefs of American manhood and performs the potential to do. Consequently, Pierre puts himself in an extreme situation and is absolutely liberated from the influence of his dead father, who unconsciously controls Pierre's behavior and thoughts. Thus, he makes a dissociated relationship with his father. In the dungeon, he physically dies, but symbolically metamorphoses into Isabel, so that he blurs the differences between Isabel and himself. Furthermore, he never stays in his own way: in this on-going process, Pierre cannot determine which is good or bad, legitimate or illegitimate and life or death.