The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

Beriah Sellers imagines a bustling city arising in the location of Stone’s Landing, its growth spurred by future railroad and steamboat trade along the Columbus river. However, routing the railroad through Stone’s Landing is impractical, and costly improvements to the river are required to make it navigable. In spite of these barriers, Beriah builds the city in his mind, investing great amounts of time and energy in its realization. Even the name he gives to his imagined city, Napoleon, suggests a desire to bend the world to his will as Napoleon did. The unrealized city therefore symbolizes the metaphoric act of Building Castles in the Sky. This idiom refers to creating hopes or plans that are impossible or unrealistic. Several characters do this habitually throughout the novel, but the city of Napoleon is the most concrete representation of the idea. Beriah figuratively erects the entire city without a foundation of reality beneath it.

The envisioned city’s name contributes symbolic meaning as well. In those days, as the narrators note, men named their children after their most revered historical and literary figures. Beriah’s devotion to his planned city suggests he values it like his own child and would thus name it after a historical figure he reveres.