# Temple Second explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Herman Melville.

## What happens

The narrator, penniless and friendless in London on a Saturday night, reflects on his dismissal from a post as a traveling physician. He wanders through the crowded streets, eventually finding a tranquil street with a theatre. A stranger gives him a ticket, and he enters the theatre's topmost gallery, where he finds a welcoming community of working-class people and a generous boy who offers him ale. The experience contrasts with his earlier expulsion from a temple, highlighting themes of charity and human connection.

## Themes in this chapter

### Appearance vs. Reality

The narrator's initial perception of the theatre as a place of exclusion is overturned by the genuine charity and community he finds in the gallery.

### Isolation and Alienation

The narrator feels utterly alone and outcast among the crowds of London, a penniless stranger in a vast city.

### Justice and Injustice

The narrator's dismissal from his post and his subsequent poverty highlight the arbitrary and unjust nature of his circumstances.

## Character check-ins

### The Narrator (Two Temples: First)

The narrator, a penniless and friendless physician, wanders London on a Saturday night and eventually enters a theatre.

### The Stranger

A working man who gives the narrator a free ticket to the theatre, showing unexpected charity.

### The Narrator (Two Temples: Second)

The narrator reflects on his earlier expulsion from a temple and his current state of poverty.

## Key lines

> Any knife, any hand of all the millions of knives and hands in London, has you this night at its mercy. You, and all mortals, live but by sufferance of your charitable kind; charitable by omission, not performance.

Every person in London could harm you, and your survival depends on the mercy of others, who are kind only by not actively harming you.

_The narrator reflects on the precariousness of life and the passive nature of charity in the city._

> A ragged boy may be a prince-like benefactor. That unpurchased pennyworth of ale revived my drooping spirits strangely.

A poor boy can be as generous as a prince, and his free gift of ale lifted my spirits in an unexpected way.

_The narrator marvels at the generosity of a poor boy who offers him ale without payment._

> Better perish ’mid myriad sharks in mid Atlantic, than die a penniless stranger in Babylonian London.

It would be better to die among sharks in the ocean than to die as a poor stranger in the overwhelming chaos of London.

_The narrator expresses the extreme despair and alienation he feels in the city._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters/temple-second
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_28_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_28_se/chapters