Bartleby, the Villian in Bartleby, the Scrivener
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,
The most widely accepted contemporary interpretations
of "Bartleby" have centered upon the theme of the
brotherhood of man or a variation thereof. Through
Bartleby's passive resistance against all that the
methodical law office serves, the unnamed narrator is
gradually turned away from his prudent, and safe, and
uncommitted position until he stands scorched by the
blazing revelation that we are, all of us, at once
interdependent and forlorn (132).
Yet still there are critics who maintain the lawyer has no set of ethics at all--that everything he does is out of self-interest and is immoral.
One of the critics who feels this way is Thomas Pribek. Pri...
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...rator who fails at saving the unsalvageable, because he at least tried.
Works Cited
Craver, Donald H., and Patricia R. Plante. "Bartleby or, the Ambiguities."Studies in Short Fiction 20.2-3 (Spring-Summer 1983): 132-136.
Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street." Anthology of America Literature: Volume I: Colonial through Romantic. Ed. George McMichael. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1993. 1301-1326.
Mitchell, Thomas R. "Dead Letters and Dead Men: Narrative Purpose in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" Studies in Short Fiction 27.3 (Summer 1990): 329-338.
Pribek, Thomas. "The 'Safe' Man of Wall Street: Characterizing Melville's Lawyer." Studies in Short Fiction 23.2 (Spring 1986): 191-195.
Schechter, Harold. "Bartleby the Chronometer" Studies in Short Fiction 19.4 (Fall 1982): 359-366.
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.
middle of paper ... ... The author in the story then presents the idea that society’s humanity is being destroyed through the burning of the letters and instead favors copying and storing things that have monetary information, nothing to do with human emotions. The author of the story presents the questions of what is valuable in society and how those that resist these values are dealt with and answers them through Bartleby's actions from his life to his death. Society values things such as money and working to make money where human things such as sentimentalities and emotions are not worth holding onto and when one refuses to work he is left with choices of imprisonment in a cell or imprisonment in a job where Bartleby instead chose to die, to be free of such a world that does not value freedom and humanity.
In Melville’s, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” a lawyer’s idea of relationships is tested. As a bachelor, his disconnection with people is an obstacle he has to overcome. The relationships between his coworkers and himself are simple and detached until Bartleby is introduced. The lawyer is befuddled at the unique behavior that this character displays and cannot help but take particular interest in him. When Bartleby is asked to work, he simply says, “I would prefer not to,” and when he quits working, he begins to stare at the wall (1112). This wall may symbolize the wall that the lawyer has built up in an attempt to ward off relationships, or it may simple symbolize Wall Street. When the lawyer finds out that Bartleby is l...
This can be seen in how the narrator and other lawyers never want to do anything that harms themselves or their reputation. Melville shows us this side of the lawyers when they come to the narrator to help rid themselves of Bartleby and they state, “Every body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are entertained of a mob; something you must do, and that without delay.” Then, the narrator decides to help not out of the goodness of his heart but because he is “fearful then of being exposed to the papers.” All the lawyers have no true concerns of what happens to Bartleby as long as he is out of their way. This helps to give the reader some insight into how the law is there to attempt to keep people formed to the society intended where everyone has there place to help society run smoothly and if someone doesn’t conform to this society, they are told that they are breaking the law and must be imprisoned. Therefore, the lawyers decide to call the police on Bartleby and have him thrown in jail for nothing other than his
In Dan McCall’s essay, “From the Reliable Narrator,” McCall stresses that the lawyer/narrator should be viewed as a reliable and trustworthy source. His perspective on the lawyer a “distinct minority”, as he feels very few view the lawyer in that way. Many critics see the lawyer as the opposite of McCall, and inforce that the lawyer is unreliable and blameworthy. That he is a representation of ‘consumer capitalism” and the he ‘is simply incapable of recognizing-the political and economic forces that have made him what he is” (McCall, 272). McCall uses other critic’s perspectives in order to reflect light on his own. He explains that the lawyer is someone he trusts, when he first read it at the age of eighteen and even now, because the lawyer
Our education system faces a myriad of questions. One of which is, what is the main objective of our education system: to graduate students at a high academic standard, to graduate students who can interact socially, or to prepare students wholly in order to become contributing members of society? Parents, school districts, and the government all have their own ideas as to the primary purpose. The means (education) to the end (producing educated citizens) can take many roads or methods. One method goes down the road of social promotion. However, the unpopular practice of social promotion in our schools does not prepare our children academically. It promotes low standards, accepts mediocrity, and gives a false hope of success in a world which is unforgiving towards the uneducated.
The infamous ending statement in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” (Melville 34), signifies not only the tragic demise of the character of Bartleby, but the dismal ruin of mankind as well. This enigmatic statement can be applied to both “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Melville’s other short story, “Benito Cereno.” Both stories are narrated by unreliable characters, leaving further questions on whether or not the Lawyer was genuinely trying to help Bartleby when he showed signs of depression or if the one-sided story of Captain Delano truly portrayed the slaves and their motives for taking over Cereno’s San Dominick. In each of Melville’s short stories, there is an obvious grayness about each tale, the plots of both stories start out slow and unsuspicious, but are then revealed through a dynamic change in events, and each novella has ultimate realities that are hidden through appearances. Together, “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” are stories that possess a deep meaning within them which is intended to make the reader question the definition of human nature.
Dilworth, Thomas. "Narrator Of 'Bartleby': The Christian-Humanist Acquaintance Of John Jacob Astor." Papers On Language & Literature 38.1 (2002): 49-75. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who developed many theories concerning the unconscious mind. Jung’s theories state that the unconscious part of a human’s psyche has two different layers, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is unique to every individual; however, the collective unconscious “is inborn.” (Carl Jung, Four Archetypes, 3) The collective unconscious is present in everyone’s psyche, and it contains archetypes which are “those psychic contents which have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration” (Jung, Archetypes, 5); they are templates of thought that have been inherited through the collective unconscious. Jung has defined many different archetypes such as the archetype of the mother, the archetype of the hero, the archetype of the shadow, etc. These Jungian archetypes are often projected by the collective unconscious onto others. If the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is examined through a Jungian archetypal lens it is possible to discern different archetypes projected by the protagonist’s unconscious self to illustrate the effects of the collective unconscious on character and plot analysis.
The narrator begins the short story Bartleby the Scrivener by “waiving the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of” (pg). Bartleby appears at first as a “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn,” (pg) character who is hired by the narrator because of his sedate nature, which he hoped would balance the personalities of his other employees. Bartleby is first isolated from the other characters through the actions of his boss, the lawyer, who “isolated Bartleby from my sight, though not removed from my voice,” (pg) by placing a folding screen around his desk and, “in a manner,
Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville are two authors who belong to dark Romanticism. They both have created various works and have different styles of expression. However, their writing can be related with one another at some points. The story of “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville begins when a lawyer complains that this profession has took him "into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men the law-copyists or scriveners" (Melville 2). Bartleby is a person who is hired by a lawyer; even that he has three other copyists working for him in his office. He always admits to do all the work he is asked, expect one day when he is asked to examine a file Bartleby replies: "I would prefer not to" (Melville 8). At first, that seemed acquitted, but rapidly it becomes a chant. At the other hand, “William Wilson” by Edgar Allan Poe talks about a character that gives everything to fulfill his ambition, who afterward loses his identity and don’t know who he is anymore. The things start getting complicated when he realizes that another person exists with the exact appearance, name, the way of speaking, and even the same birthday as his. Subsequently, William Wilson becomes obsessed with the second William Wilson and at the start they find it hard to ignore each other, while their peers thought that they were brothers. At the end of the story, William Wilson who is angry and annoyed with the other Wilson confronts him, where second William Wilson finds death. The main similarity of the main characters of the stories of “Bartleby the Scrivener” written by Herman Melville and “William Wilson” written by Edgar Allan Poe is because they both are described in the first person. I w...
The lawyer, also the narrator, hires Bartleby to work as a scrivener at his business that involves bonds, mortgages and titles. The lawyer thinks he has all of his scriveners behaviors “on lock”. Although Bartleby started as a hard working employee, he eventually and in a calm manner refuses to do any requested work by the lawyer by simply saying, “I would prefer not to”. The lawyer doesn’t fire Bartleby after he declines to work, instead he gives Bartleby another chance. The lawyer preference to remain calm shows that he chooses to stray from confrontation. Bartleby continuous refusal to work leads to him being fired, but he refuses to leave. The lawyer’s philosophy and careful balancing of his employees is compromised by Bartleby actions. The lawyer moves his entire practice to another building to only find Bartleby there. Bartleby is arrested and continues in his bizarre daze. The lawyer visits Bartleby to convince him to eat and get through to him, but it doesn’t work and Bartleby dies. The lawyer sensitivity and empathy towards Bartleby raises questions to the lawyers sincerity. Ultimately, my goal is to demonstrate what was the lawyer’s intent to help Bartleby?
College is a great experience where no all high school students get the chance to live the feeling of a college student before their graduation. High school might be great for these teenagers, but college is even greater. College can offer them a lot more experience than they get while in high school. Becoming a college student and having a professional education is more than important for new generations. The importance of having an associate degree, a doctoral degree, and a master degree symbolize a successful person. Becoming an educated person with any degrees will make that person’s life as simple as attending to school and getting the best out from it. Now, high school students should attend to college before or after they graduate to
Carl G. Jung was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist from Switzerland (Lightfoot, 2010). Jung has constructed and developed several concepts including extraversion and introversion, collective unconscious and archetypes (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). Besides, Jung has a system of personality (also known as psyche), which is analytical psychology, suggested that intrapsychic forces can motivate humans and the shared evolutionary history among people can actually derived different images (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). The deep-rooted spiritual concerns are involved in the inherited unconscious and this also can explain why people in the world strive for creative expression and psychic completion (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). In this essay, it will discuss about Jung’s collective unconscious, different evidences that support it, the theory of Archetypes and how it can affect our daily life.
Having a job made me fear starting college because I knew it was going to be a lot of weight on my shoulders. Though, I knew if I wanted a better life that meant I would have to go back to school. Meaning I had to do both school and work because of my car payment and other bills. After a year of being out from high school, I decided to take a chance and start college. Getting an education has always caused stressed upon me. School did not come easily to me, like how it does for most others. College is not easy to handle when you are having to juggle time, work, and other responsibilities.