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“The Figure in the Carpet” has been considered as one of the most ambiguous tales of Henry James, and as a tale on the absence of absolute truth or absolute meaning. But, seen from the perspective of James’s consistent interests in the relation of life and art in his artist tales, it can be read as another variation of that relation, one that depicts an inversion of life and art. According to James himself, this tale was meant to criticize the lack of “analytic appreciation” and the “numbness of general sensibility” “in the English- speaking air.” Thus, in the story, three critics are lured and tested for their critical qualifications. They are meant to discover the “secret”—“the figure in the carpet”—of Hugh Vereker, a famous but unpopular writer. But they can’t achieve the goal because of their “limp curiosity,” and because, as critics who have abandoned their real lives and true human sympathy, they have a strong avidity for fame and success. The inversion of life and art is the natural result following from their quest for the “secret.” The anonymous first-person narrator is an especially cold, obsessed observer who inflicts violent injury on other people’s hearts and commits an ‘Unpardonable Sin’ like the scientist characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tales.