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Character analysis of the narrator in bartleby
Essay on bartleby
Character analysis of the narrator in bartleby
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We have the entrance of the motionless young man, Bartleby. Bartleby appeals to the lawyer in part, because unlike the other guys in the office, he is not going to make any trouble. In fact, the lawyer has this fantasy that he is going to bring Bartleby into the office and maybe Bartleby’s calmness and placidity will spread to the obstreperous other two, Turkey and Nippers. Several times the story said that the lawyer is disarmed by him when he does those outrageous “I would prefer not to,” he thinks to respond with, “But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him.” (Melville, 9) There are times when the lawyer responds to this in
a very human way because he is touched by that. However, the being disarmed, I think is more the willfulness of Bartleby, because there is something very willful about it in these refusals. The lawyer says himself that he operates on assumptions and many times these assumptions are usually wrong, and then he engages will all these rationalizations, and uses his prudence and his reason to come up with explanations for why he’s behaving the way he is behaving. However, Bartleby acts, he comes to the realization that Bartleby acts just based on preference and that preference is always a negative preference. It is never a preference to do something it is a preference that I would prefer not to. Again, the lawyer is a man of assumption’s and he sees the world and makes certain assumptions and people act rationally, and the world is a logical place, it is ordered and logical. Bartleby is not, he is a man of preferences and negative preferences which presents itself as a kind of an absolute freedom, but makes absolutely no sense. The two of them, though spiritually quite far apart, are really bond in some way.
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...
McCall focuses his argument within the way in which Melville has written Bartleby, The Scrivener, he goes into detail about the comical aspects within the story and uses Melville’s description of Bartleby’s saying “I prefer not to,’ he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.” (272). McCall suggests that the adverbs Melville uses, “respectfully” , “slowly” and “mildly” , “create[s] a leisurely little excursion into the uncanny” (279). I agree that the lawyer must have had some wit and good intentions in making the claim about Bartleby up to a point, I cannot accept this fully because many people still believe that the lawyer is unreliable. Most critics within the majority, as McCall reinstates, “believe, “the lawyer is “self-satisfied”, “pompous”…”a smug fool” who is ‘terribly unkind to a very sick man’ “(2660. I disagree with the idea that the lawyer was unkind and Bartleby was sick. The lawyer was fascinated by Bartleby’s responses to the job, and Bartleby, I feel knew exactly what he was doing in stating his responses. McCall acknowledges that “these cure two central problems in the story: the nature of Bartleby’s illness and the lawyer’s capacity to understand it,”
In the beginning of each story, characters are both shown as “ideal” characters in that their characteristics give the characters their first perceived amiableness. In “Bartleby the Scrivener” Melville uses distinguishing characteristics to solely represent Bartleby from the others in the story. He enters the story first, as a response to an advertisement for a position as a scrivener in a law office. Melville states, “A motionless, young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the door being open for it was summer. I can see that figure now – pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!” (Meyer 149). Here he makes it known that just by seeing Bartleby’s presence when he first enters the law office; he is exactly what the unnamed lawyer was inquiring about. He was by far unlike other characters in the story. He had no vices or hang ups, the first presence and his stature, he came their wiling and ready to ...
The set up of this environment clearly gives a sense of entrapment as every direction Bartleby faces he is met with another wall and must maintain his focus on copying, on working. The lawyer however, shows no sign of this being a bad thing; he simply sees the sharing of the office as a convenience to be able to call Bartleby to run his errands whenever he calls and doesn’t even have to look at Bartleby, a separation of humanity or social contact. As the story progresses, Bartleby refuses requests like checking the copies or going to the post office and eventually begins refusing to work entirely but this is seen as simply Bartleby being odd and not as a resistance to work but rather there is a cause for his refusal to work, as stated by the narrator, his eyes were perhaps hurt and needed time to recover. As time goes on Bartleby still refuses to work and lives in the office and this bothers the narrator to the point of having him evicted from the premises by use of force, calling the authorities and having him thrown in prison.... ...
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...
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.
According to founder and CEO of Bartleby.com, Steven van Leeuwen, the Bartleby Project offers, “the most comprehensive public reference library ever published on the web” (Bartleby.com, 2000, para. 4). The Bartleby Project—the name of which comes from Melville’s classic short story Bartleby, the Scrivener—began as a personal research experiment at Columbia University in which van Leeuwen sought to combine his information systems knowledge with his love of books to create accessible, searchable electronic versions of classic literature and reference works. The first book published on the site was Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1994. Following this success, van Leeuwen continued to develop the project privately, becoming Bartleby.com in 1997 and continuing to expand into the impressive collection of classic and modern reference and works of literature that it is today (Hane, 2000).
One of the literary elements that Melville uses that convey the narrator's attitude towards Bartleby is diction. The author's diction in this short story is very descriptive and is also slightly comical. One of the ways this is used is when the author gently mocks the narrator by having him expose his flaws through his own words. For example, when the narrator talks of John Jacob Astor, a well respected man who complemented him, we find out how full of himself he is and how highly he thinks of himself. "The late John Jacob Astor, a parsonage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point…I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion." (Page 122, Paragraph2) Another example of the author's use of diction appears on page 127 in paragraph 2; "At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famished for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically." Here the narrator's description of Bartleby's writing habits in the office, at first, tell us that he is very pleased with his progress and the work he has done but then it tells us that he is not very enthusiastic but...
My conclusion, then, is that the lawyer strays from the zone of comfort to only lead him back to it. For instance, he does not try to understand Bartleby through Bartleby’s perspective, but he wants to understand who Bartleby is so that Bartleby will conform to the way he is. The lawyer’s empathy that he shows towards Bartleby is not a genuine display for Bartleby, but as a selfish way to restore the order in which he does not have to deal with this conflict.
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
He starts to disconnect himself by refusing to do work given to him by his boss, this comes from his desire to be complacent, which we find out when he says “I like to be stationary,” when talking to the lawyer (127). Bartleby continues to change throughout the story, as he goes from being an employee who won’t do his work, to never leaving the office and essentially making it his home. According to Todd Giles, “Bartleby's silence establishes distance,” meaning that he becomes so out of place that people stop expecting of him (Giles, 2007). What this causes is the need for Bartleby to be removed from the Wall Street Office. The lawyer tries in many different ways to do so, and even offers him more money than he is owed if he will quit. Bartleby refuses and continues to stay in the building, doing nothing, detached from the world around him. Eventually the lawyer changes offices due to Bartleby and leaves him there for the next buyer. Bartleby is forced out by the new owner, and in time it is told the police he is a vagrant and he is thrown into jail. Bartleby’s story ends
Although not as outwardly demanding as the chief clerk, the lawyer attempts to have Bartleby obey his orders and gets frustrated when Bartleby replies with “I would prefer not to”. The chief clerk even resorts to physical violence in a fit of rage to get Bartleby to cooperate “when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and … I grappled him and threw him”. The lawyer uses ”old Adam” to mean the “sinful character of human nature” in reference to his aggression towards Bartleby (OED). One rebuttal to my argument of the lawyer representing the bourgeoisie would be that the lawyer comes off as a kind-hearted individual who rarely shows signs of aggression or anger towards Bartleby. This is true, however, the lawyer’s appearance is from his own recollection of the story as it is narrated in first person. It is quite possible that the lawyer is an unreliable narrator, as any person narrating a story with himself in it is bound to embellish their kindness and limit their recollection of their downfalls. Gregor’s story is narrated by an omniscient third person narrator, who tells an unbiased and truthful
In Herman Melville’s work “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street”, the idea of a capitalist agenda is intentionally reinforced. This short work tells the story of a lawyer on Wall-Street and those of his employees, but he is particularly fascinated by Bartleby. Bartleby at first a hard worker who divulged tirelessly in his job as a law-copyist begins to “ prefer not” to do what is asked of him. This leads to the lawyer to grow increasingly curious about Bartleby. The idea of capitalist values in “Bartleby the Scrivener” are supported through the way the narrator, the lawyer, presents his employees to the reader, describes meeting Bartleby and Bartleby’s
Doloff, Steven. "The Prudent Samaritan: Melville's 'Bartleby, The Scrivener' As Parody Of Christ's Parable To The Lawyer." Studies In Short Fiction 34.3 (1997): 357-61. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
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