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
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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…
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
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.
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 freedoms and humanity.
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.
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
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...
Now, reading about humanity as a dismal ruin may seem a bit dramatic and depressing, but it is unfortunately true. Melville was using the character of Bartleby as a symbol for the inevitable fall of humankind in 1853. Today, the same message can be passed through the mysterious character of Bartleby. Times have not changed and the moral values of humans are still showing signs of utter disappointment. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” (Melville 34).
Bartleby who is part of the name of the story is not even considered the “chief character” of the story, but the lawyer (Melville 1484). The narrator repeatedly references different sources such as Cicero, “his biblical evocations” as well as Trinity Church, “his pride of association with John Jacob Astor” (Dilworth 49). He uses them as ways to explain what he did which may interpret “the guilt the lawyer feels”, if that is what he really feels (Dilworth 50). He may or may not feel guilt, but his actions clearly show his selfishness. The lawyer helps Bartleby because he feels pity, he helps him to feel better and to fulfill his self-interest to go to heaven. He was “predestinated from eternity” and Bartleby was his test (Melville 1502). That must clearly be the reason why the “chief character” of the story tries to help Bartleby. He is a business man seeking profit, he may know he ...
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,
An example that the dead letter office job plays a part in Bartleby’s character is Bartleby isn't the average office worker. He is the weird guy no one likes, doesn't do his work, and just spends hours sitting and staring. When asked to do something, he responds with "I would prefer not to". There isn't much of an argument being created with someone who doesn't give much to argue with. Yet, “Bartleby is improper, propertyless, without possession, while at the same time in full control of his own possession"(Giles). He tends keeps to himself instead of letting others know more about him. Nothing is known about Bartleby, except for what one can see and take in; such as his name, or that he never leaves the office. In Bartle...
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
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
Bartleby did not have a place of residence but he lived in the office so when he made the decision to stop becoming a productive member of the capitalist society he also lost is “home” in the process as well. This important fact about Bartleby not having a place to live can show the divide between the upper and lower classes. The lawyer was unaware of this situation till one weekend he came back when the rest of Wall Street was vacant and there was Bartleby in the office since he had no other place to be. The layout of the office is an important piece to note since Bartleby did not leave either. The office was located on the second floor but looking out the windows you could not see anything but a wall. This wall could be the figurative wall of control by the upper class on the workers or lower class. The walls surrounding the office that there is no outside world for the workers and that they would be doing their work endlessly. Melville is showing a clear example of the situation of capitalism and the impact on the workers which is that they are undeniably controlled and continuously reminded of their unhuman status within the society. The second part of the significance of Bartleby not having a place to live besides the office is that this ended up getting him arrested and sent to prison. Bartleby ends up dying in prison facing a wall. The irony that he dies facing a wall
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,