In this paper I analyzed the novel "Bartleby the Scrivener" written by Herman Melville. My goal is to answer the question about the power of words and the readers interpretation of them. I appraoched the research using the article of Roland Barthes "Textual Anlysis of Tale of Poe." The proposed method of analysis is good but it works only with small texts. In this case the text is a small tale, but is full of meaningful moments that merrit to be decoded. If using the method for longer texts, the analysis would transform into a long research that may loose connections between meanings of words and expressions.
Starting with the title we can see that it consists of the words "Bartleby the Scrivener" and a subtitle "A Tale of Wall Street". According to Barthes "Every title thus has several simultaneous meanings, including at least these two: (I) what it says linked to the contingency of what follows it; (ii) the announcement itself that a piece of literature (which means, in fact, a commodity) is going to follow; in other words, the title always has a double function; enunciating an...
Normally when most people think of vampires, they envision a deathly, pale creature with fangs. But Thomas Foster seems to think differently, who argues that it is not necessary for a vampire to embody a stereotypical vampire. Surprisingly enough, even humans can be these types of monsters. From Foster 's perspective, being a vampire not only includes an individual 's aesthetics, but also their actions, personality, intent, and overall representation of personal identity. The classic novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, presents an excellent example of this occurrence, where the character Roger Chillingworth meets the criteria of a vampiric figure, based on Thomas Foster 's ideas of vampirism, found in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
Deep-seated in these practices is added universal investigative and enquiring of acquainted conflicts between philosophy and the art of speaking and/or effective writing. Most often we see the figurative and rhetorical elements of a text as purely complementary and marginal to the basic reasoning of its debate, closer exploration often exposes that metaphor and rhetoric play an important role in the readers understanding of a piece of literary art. Usually the figural and metaphorical foundations strongly back or it can destabilize the reasoning of the texts. Deconstruction however does not indicate that all works are meaningless, but rather that they are spilling over with numerous and sometimes contradictory meanings. Derrida, having his roots in philosophy brings up the question, “what is the meaning of the meaning?”
Melville intends something less black and white with more gray shading. Melville uses dramatic irony and grim humor in “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. This is to show the reader how the Lawyer assumes he is a safe, successful and powerful man with extensive control in his polite society until he hires a man named Bartleby. This relationship is slowly revealed to be quite a conundrum for the Lawyer and the reader. Melville shows how the Lawyer never had any power or control over Bartleby but quite the opposite; Bartleby held all the power and control in this relationship. I will explore the important of the power struggle and the fight to maintain control between the Lawyer and Bartleby.
Wendy Galeas Professor Geddes The Study of Literature: Essay 2 April 9, 2015 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.
The body of this argument lies in a meager psychoanalysis of Melville. I have had to take a very broad approach, look at Melville purely as a man. I have attempted to put the reader into Melville's head, where I have attempted to put myself. To better achieve this I discuss much of Melville's background, hoping to give the reader a sense of what he had experienced. I have written with confidence, but hopefully not too much, you must decide for yourselves what of mine you feel is right. It is always very hard to use psychoanalytical approaches, because, as the mind is a mystery, it is all ultimately unproved. All psychoanalytical opinion is based on event, as all psychology is based on the idea that men are shaped by experience. I speculate below, on things I cannot really know, and I do this only to achieve some rough personal connections between Melville and his Moby-Dick. It serves me, and I hope you as well.
Conclusively, Edgar Allan Poe’s distinctive writing style comes from his use of punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, tone, figurative language. Commas, dashes, semicolons, and exclamation marks appear frequently in his writing. Simultaneously, they affect the organization and length of his sentences. Word choice sets the tone. Literary devices imbue it with life. On comparing “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, this is observed.
Diction plays a critical role in the development of the tone in a story. The type of words the author uses directly leads to the tone of the entire literary work. If ...
It is noteworthy to be stated clearly at the outset of the present paper that literary theories are composed of a mere plethora of highly debatable ideas, concepts and assumptions. They are in other words, strikingly vague, opaque and of a typical flexibility. According to Wellek and Warren (1966, p. 30) }there are then, not only one or two but literally hundreds of independent, diverse, and mutually exclusive conceptions of literature, each of which is in some way right~. That is, the diversity of literary theories and even the contradiction between them sometimes, is something natural.
Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything. Since his article, “Allure, Authority and Psychoanalysis” discusses the meaning behind everything that happens in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” we can also examine “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” in the same manner.
In many novels, the society created by the author is surrounded by wealth and corruption. Numerous amount of times these settings are produced based on the life in which the author lives. Charles Dickens is no different. In the midst of most of his novels, Dickens exposes the deception of Victorian England and the strict society that holds everything together. In Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, a satire is created where the basis of the novel is the mockery against money and morals. Throughout this novel, multiple symbols and depictions of the characters display the corruption of the mind that surrounds social classes in Victorian England.
Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.” “The Norton Anthology American Literature.” 8th Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1979 1102-1128. Print.
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his novel, The Scarlet Letter to critique the Puritan faith. In developing his story of the adulteress Hester Prynne, he uses both religious and natural imagery to show his disdain for the Puritan religion. The Scarlet Letter is a vivid portrayal of his utter dislike for the Puritans and everything that they stand for. Hawthorne is in complete disagreement with them and makes it clear throughout the book.
Abstract: There are many Analyst who would agree that the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the whale is just half of what the novel is really talking about. They would also agree that Melville employs some sort of spiritual read by simply by providing scriptures and rephrasing verses from the Bible into the text. But what is it really about? What made Melville come up with this idea style of writing Moby-Dick? Other analyst who also asked themselves this questions, probably looked deeper into the novel doing tons of research figured out a possible solution. The solution that Melville was influenced by Shakespeare novel ‘Hamlet’ this has been established because of the allusions Melville makes to Hamlet are countless. Moby-Dick may be a contemporary version of Hamlet. This paper will illustrate how the characters of Moby-Dick counterparts with the characters in Hamlet, expanding the reason why the character in one works with the other.
The Scarlet Letter is a blend of realism, symbolism, and allegory. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses historical settings for this fictional novel and even gives historical background information for the inspiration of the story of Hester Prynne in the introduction of The Scarlet Letter, ‘The Custom-House’. The psychological exploration of the characters and the author’s use of realistic dialogue only add to the realism of the novel. The most obvious symbol of the novel is the actual scarlet letter ‘A’ that Hester wears on her chest every day, but Hawthorne also uses Hester’s daughter Pearl and their surroundings as symbols as well. Allegory is present as well in The Scarlet Letter and is created through the character types of several characters in the novel.
Literary criticism is used as a guideline to help analyze, deconstruct, interpret, or even evaluate literary works. Each type of criticism offers its own methods that help the reader to delve deeper into the text, revealing all of its innermost features. New Criticism portrays how a work is unified, Reader-Response Criticism establishes how the reader reacts to a work, Deconstructive Criticism demonstrates how a work falls apart, Historical Criticism illustrates how the history of the author and the author’s time period influence a text, and last of all, Psychological Criticism expresses how unconscious motivations drive the author in the creation of their work as well as how the reader’s motivations influence their own interpretation of the text (Lynn 139, 191). This creates a deep level of understanding of literature that simply cannot be gained through surface level reading. If not one criticism is beneficial to the reader, then taking all criticisms or a mixture of specific criticisms into consideration might be the best way to approach literary