Thesis: Bartelby is tormented by his inner demons relating to the loss he has suffered in his personal life, and therefore has to find a way to cope with this. Intro: Shortly describe Bartelby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street and the characters in it. State thesis and main ideas of body paragraphs. Body/Page #1: Explain the aspect of loss in Bartelby and connect them. Loss of life, nature, the death of Trancendentalism. Show how each character copes with these losses. Windows out to brick walls, one skylight, mostly closed off buildings. Body/Page #2: Explain Trancendentalism and how it is represented by Bartelby. Show how it is misunderstood but works well until it slowly deteriorates. Body/Page #3: Show the real world around Bartelby …show more content…
and compare and contrast trancententalism and romanticism/realism. Conclusion: Tie everything together. "These are the fingers, now look at the fist" End with modified thesis. Nick Smith English 3A Mr. Farrington January 19, 2015 Character Analysis Essay Bartleby is a character surrounded is mystery and inquiry.
He enters the law office of the Narrator after being hired as a scrivener, or human copy machine. Bartleby proceeds to work well as a copyist, but refuses to help out with any other office tasks, or rather, he simply prefers not to. The lawyer and his other employees are shocked, but Bartleby just won't do what they ask. This alludes to how transcendentalism related to society and the incoming era of realism at the time. Death seems to surround Bartleby from the moment he walks in the door and into the Narrator's life. He's described as "cadaverous," and his corpse-like appearance is reflected in his strangely calm manner. The Narrator has a chilling vision of Bartleby as a corpse in his winding sheet, which evokes sympathy and fear in himself , and even when Bartleby is alive, he has a certain undead quality about him. Also significant is what the Narrator calls Bartleby's "dead wall reveries," in which Bartleby stares at the dead, blank brick wall outside his office window for hours on end. This presence of the living dead in the office is really disturbing, and there's something incredibly creepy about Bartleby's in understandable actions. Death being a major theme in this story is a direct comparison to the death of transcendentalism at the time Melville was writing this. Bartleby is used as a symbol of the passing of transcendentalist thought to realist ideologies. He often looks out of his window, presumably …show more content…
searching for nature which is no longer there. After he is fired by the Narrator, he tries to stick around, as did transcendentalism when the number of its followers dwindled.
Throughout the story there is not one person who can understand Bartleby, which very obviously references the sophisticated nature of transcendentalist thought. The Narrator does try to understand him, giving him reprieve from doing the duties he would prefer not to, but it is to no prevail. Bartleby is a passive resistor, which the narrator says that nothing so aggravates an earnest person as that; in fact, it is Bartleby’s passiveness that makes the narrator to confront Bartleby. While the transcendentalist thought of resistance brings higher thinking and much more of a connection to the earth, rejecting the industrial society, Bartleby’s refusal to accept authority results in his death in prison. Bartleby can see only the brick wall in jail. The narrator attempts to have him admire the blue sky and the grass in the yard, but these views of nature don’t provide Bartleby with any hope. The transcendentalist passive resistance liberates and allows to express thoughts fully while Bartleby’s passive resistance only shows the control that society has over
him.
Bartleby- The Scrivener In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”, the author uses several themes to convey his ideas. The three most important themes are alienation, man’s desire to have a free conscience, and man’s desire to avoid conflict. Melville uses the actions of an eccentric scrivener named Bartleby, and the responses of his cohorts, to show these underlying themes to the reader. The first theme, alienation, is displayed best by Bartleby’s actions. He has a divider put up so that the other scriveners cannot see him, while all of them have desks out in the open so they are full view of each other, as well as the narrator. This caused discourse with all of the others in the office. This is proven when Turkey exclaims, “ I think I’ll just step behind his screen and black his eyes for him.”(p.2411) The other scriveners also felt alienated by the actions of the narrator. His lack of resolve when dealing with Bartleby angered them because they knew that if they would have taken the same actions, they would have been dismissed much more rapidly. The narrator admits to this when he said, “ With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence.” (2409) The next theme is man’s desire to avoid conflict. The narrator avoids conflict on several occasions. The first time Bartleby refused to proofread a paper, the narrator simply had someone else do it instead of confronting him and re...
People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into for a deeper understanding of the choice death for these characters.
Bartleby, the Scrivener, a story of lawyer and scrivener, questions like: What is worth living for in the world? What does society to value or shape what it means to be successful or of worth in the world that is inhabited? This is done through various implications of Bartleby’s actions and responses, as well as the lawyer’s, and the descriptions and imagery of the environment.
Bartleby demonstrates behaviours indicative of depression, the symptoms he has in accordance with the DSM-IV are a loss of interest in activities accompanied by a change in appetite, sleep, and feelings of guilt (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, 320). Very shortly after Bartleby begins his work as a Scrivener he is described by the narrator as having done “nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery”. (Melville, 126) In contrast, Bartleby had previously been described as a very hard worker and this process of doing increasingly less shows how his a diminishing sense of interest both in his work but also of the perception others have of him. It is also noted that included in this lack of interest is a social withdrawal (DSM—IV, 321) which corresponds well to Bartleby in that his workspace becomes known as his “hermitage”. During small talk which included Bartleby he says that he “would prefer to be left alone”. (Melville, 120) Bartleby only emerges from his hermitage when called upon and quickly returns when faced with confrontation.
...e into his soul in order to help him and possibly to understand him better. " I might give alms to his body; but his body does not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach." (Page134-135, Paragraph 4) This is the real struggle the narrator is facing, the narrator confusion and frustration with Bartleby would all go away if only he knew what was wrong so he could help him but it isn't a physical pain but a spiritual pain in which Bartleby would have to open up in order for the narrator to help. Tone is just one of the literary deceives used that help convey the narrator's attitude towards Bartleby.
Herman Melville uses a first person point of view to show the narrator’s first hand fascination with his employee Bartleby, as well as Bartleby’s strange behavior and insubordination.
Through Bartleby’s flat and static character type, it is amazing how many different types of conflict he causes. From the first order to examine the law copies, to the last request to dine in the prison, Bartleby’s conflictive reply of “I would prefer not to” stays the same (Melville 150). In this way, he is a very simple character, yet he is still very hard to truly understand. Even ...
To begin, the focus will be set on the issues posed by the story of Bartleby. The audience may wonder why Bartleby goes from the employee who does his work without being problematic, to one who repetitively
The story of Bartleby was a very interesting story open for many different interpretations. Melville does and excellent job building suspension towards different thoughts as to what caused Bartleby to become an emotionless incapable worker. Here is evidence throughout the story to reflect the kindheartedness of the narrator. After reading this work the last quote “Ah Bartleby, Ah humanity” stood out as a cry of sadness for failing to understand and further assist Bartleby. After the numerous attempts He describes himself an elder lawyer that has his own office with a total of four employees including Bartleby. The narrator takes the time to learn the qualities of each individual not just on a performance basis however, personally as well.
We as human beings assume we have our lives under control and we can exert some power over the situations in our lives. The Lawyer believed in a natural assumption of having the power and control over what he considered a lower less sophisticated class of humanity hence his employees in this story. Bartleby created a situation for the Lawyer he has never experienced before. The Lawyer learns in the end after Bartleby’s death that his rules of society may not be right for all of humanity.
His efforts though are fruitless because he was not able to get to Bartleby and never truly understood him, even in prison as the man eventually dies of starvation. Although after his death the lawyer does learn of Bartleby’s previous and listless job at a ‘Dead Letter Office’ which made the lawyer sympathize for him and wonder if that job is what made Bartleby so distant. Bartleby was a loner who distanced himself from everyone, even in death, he was aloof and never interacted with anyone which is not considered normal human behavior because humans are supposed to be social. This story went a little deeper and gave the idea of humanity as a whole being apathetic towards each other, because only the lawyer showed any sort of humane concern for Bartleby while the others cared less. Bartleby himself displayed apathetic behavior as he showed little to no care for how his behavior affected others or even himself. Outside in the world, many people who are stressed out and constantly working tend to only focus on themselves and have little to no care for other people most of the time. It’s another negative view on humanity, but at the same time it’s not that wrong, as society made by humans also makes others so busy and stuck in tedious schedules that they gradually become more jaded and some even become distant and
Herman Melville wrote about Bartleby in Bartleby the Scrivener and in The Dead Letter Office. The Dead Letter Office is a post office in Washington D.C. where letters end up at a dead end because the letters were not able to reach the destinations they were sent to. So whoever they had been sent to never got those them. Bartleby's job was to get those letters and later on burn them. In Bartleby the Scrivener, Bartleby no longer works in the Dead Letter Office; he now works for a lawyer. "Dead Letters And Dead Men: Narrative Purpose In 'Bartleby'" written by Thomas R. Mitchell and “Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Todd Giles are both critical articles where the authors point out different meanings from “Bartleby the Scrivener” relating Bartleby to a dead letter. There is great significance within the story between Bartleby and the Dead Letter Office because it plays a big part on Bartleby’s character , such as not being the average worker, lost, and antisocial, by having Bartleby compared to a dead letter.
Davis, “The Narrator’s Dilemma in ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’: The Excellently Illustrated Re-statement of a Problem” he provides evidence of the capitalism being present in the characters along with the story line. One of the first issues that Davis explains as an issue of concern that starts from the very beginning of “Bartleby the Scrivener” which is how the narrator, the lawyer, “worries more about the usefulness and productivity of his scriveners than their individual characters.” As explained in the previous paragraph the lawyer introduces all of his employees and what he sees from them at the beginning of the story. The lawyer is more focuses on what he employees do for him not who they are as individuals. This is the first down fall of capitalism that is found in the story. The next important event of the story line is when Bartleby makes his famous response of “I would prefer not to.” As Davis explains Bartleby is the enigma of story since he is refusing to do work. “Bartleby is a man confronted with ‘what he feels to be the meaninglessness of the universe’; ‘there is no possibility of meaningful action, Bartleby seems to say, and it is certain that man cannot successfully will anything.’” Bartleby becomes aware of the meaningless of his job as a scrivener, just copying meaningless information endlessly. A unique feature of capitalism is that the value of an individual is set on their output for a job. This makes Bartleby’s value very
The quote, “Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his own particular business there” (12), depicts the separation between Bartleby and society. Though Bartleby is in an office space shared with others, he shuts them out and isolates himself. He doesn’t desire to be associated with anything but his own work. There is only an office screen separating him from the remainder of the office, but he still finds a method to alienate himself. This displays his ability to form his own isolated world. These behaviors of Bartleby are the result of society. When Bartleby first came to the law firm he was quite normal. But once he was ordered to review the documents by the lawyer, Bartleby refused to do something that society believed to be usual tasks. Therefore, asking Bartleby to complete the basic tasks started his
Herman Melville's short story, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," poses many moral questions, but refuses to answer them nicely and neatly. Unfortunately, Melville's ambiguities have lead to some unusual interpretations concerning the ethics of the unnamed lawyer who narrates the story. While it may seem perfectly obvious to most of us that he goes out of his way to be sensitive to Bartleby's needs, beginning with the narrator's allowing him to refrain from certain duties, to refraining from all his duties, to letting him make his office his lodgings, to offering him beyond what he owes Bartleby and securing him another position, to even inviting him to live with him in the lawyer's own home. As Harold Schechter puts it, the narrator is meant "to be a model of terrestrial morality" (359). And, as Donald H. Craver and Patricia R. Plante explain,