For Warner Berthoff, Melville's short works of the mid-1850s show a grasp of his subject matter not previously in his possession, not even in Moby-Dick: "a clarity of exposition and a tonic firmness and finality of implication" [REF].
John Bryant points to the experimental use of narrative voice in the stories: in addition to third-person narration, Melville makes his fictionalized narrators "less and less reliable."[REF]