Bartleby of Bartleby the Scrivener
Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” introduces many interesting characters with many different personalities to us. However, out of Ginger Nut, Turkey, Nippers, and the Old Man who narrates the story, the one that is most mysterious to us is Bartleby. Bartleby is a scrivener, which, in simple terms, is a human version of a modern day copy machine. He does his job extremely well, hardly ever stopping his work and getting things done quickly and efficiently. However, he is a man of few words. In fact, he is a man of one phrase: “I would prefer not to.” He says this in response to anything that is requested of him other than to copy documents. He actually outright refuses to do anything else that his boss (the narrator) asks him to do. This is the first step in confusing the reader about Bartleby. Melville, however, never seems to offer an answer to this mystery. Another interesting thing that I noticed was that Bartleby never said “I will not.”, but “I prefer not.” This would indicate that the person he is talking to has an option as to choosing what Bartleby will or won’t do, but it is said in such a way that it manages to confuse the narrators feelings, and causes him, for a long period of time, to simply accept the statement as a “no”. This appears to me as a weakness of the narrator as a business owner, but at the same time makes me wonder what is Bartleby’s purpose for responding in such a way. Another interesting characteristic of Bartleby is his living habits, which we find out about later in the story. He apparently lives at the office (originally unbeknownst to the narrator). He sleeps, washes, and works in the same place. What makes this even more interesting is that he refuses (or states that he would “prefer not”) to change his living arrangements. When the narrator moves his business, and Bartleby refuses to vacate the premises after the new tenant arrives, the narrator is taken to be responsible for Bartleby, simply because he is the only person who is even close to knowing him. After a lengthy process that ends with Bartleby in prison, who seemingly regards the narrator as the reason for his being there, the story quickly closes with the demise and death of Bartleby, and the strange introduction of the “grub man” (who seems as though he has some deeper importance in the story which I cannot place).
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...
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 ...
From the removal of Native Americans in Georgia to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the crime of greed affected millions. Condemned men, women and children suffered cruelty, starvation and being raped and beaten in a brutal way. Although dissimilar by geography and time, the pain and torment experienced by the Native Americans in a route that became known as, "The Trail of Tears", unite them with their Jewish brothers. Prejudice, race, politics, and powers are strong similarities and differences between the Holocaust and the Trail of Tears.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a science fiction book that captures both the good and bad sides of cloning and mass production of humans through science. Huxley’s book, published in 1932, conveys his well-developed and disturbingly accurate ideas about human behavior in what was then the distant future. In addition, his writing measures the capacity for which humans can obsess over not only having a perfect society, but also having total control over everyone and everything in a world where nothing is wild and untamed. Individualism is seen as a cause of instability, and society in its entirety is broken down into five castes. For the people of the “World State”, life is based on immediate pleasure and constant happiness; sex and the use of the drug soma are a major part of every person’s life.
Every human being in this controlled society is created on an assembly line in test tubes much like a factory. The first test tube baby in our world was born in Great Britain on the 25th of July 1978. They retrieved one of the mother eggs and placed into a test tub wear it was fertilized with a father’s sperm. The scientist then waited for the cell to divide in to 64 cells, then placed the fertilized egg in the mother’s uterus were it was successfully embedded, and then the baby was born about 9 months later. There are many more humans that have been conceived in this way. This is part of the ...
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.
In Herman Melville's short story, Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator's attitude towards Bartleby is constantly changing, the narrator's attitude is conveyed through the author's use of literary elements such as; diction-descriptive and comical, point of view-first person, and tone-confusion and sadness.
There were quite a few changes made from Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World to turn it into a “made for TV” movie. The first major change most people noticed was Bernard Marx’s attitude. In the book he was very shy and timid toward the opposite sex, he was also very cynical about their utopian lifestyle. In the movie Bernard was a regular Casanova. He had no shyness towards anyone. A second major deviation the movie made form the book was when Bernard exposed the existing director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Bernard himself was moved up to this position. In the book the author doesn’t even mention who takes over the position. The biggest change between the two was Lenina, Bernard’s girlfriend becomes pregnant and has the baby. The screenwriters must have made this up because the author doesn’t even mention it. The differences between the book and the movie both helped it and hurt it.
One major issue that helps maintain social stability in Brave New World is sex. It is thought of as normal for people to be completely open with their sexual nature. It is typical for children to run around naked during recess playing games that are sexual and sometimes homosexual in nature. Every adult is encouraged to sleep with as many different partners as possible. This outlook on sexual nature is quite different from actual accepted views. Today, sex is most widely accepted as a private, romantic event that should take place between monogamous couples. Because sex is a natural need of the human body, people of Huxley’s society feel pleased by being open with their sexuality. Indulging in their sexual pleasures eases their minds and keeps them from questioning the level of freedom they have.
Savage, D. S. (1947). Aldous Huxley and the Dissociation of Personality. The Johns Hopkins University Press , 537-568.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, while fictitiously showing the future possible advances of science and technology, is actually warning people of what science could become. In the Foreword of Brave New World, Huxley states: “The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals” (xi). He is not suggesting that this is how science should advance, but that science will advance the way that people allow it to. The novel is not supposed to depict a “utopian” society by any means, but it is supposed to disturb the reader and warn him not to fall into this social decay. Huxley uses satire to exploit both communism and American capitalism created by Ford.
Today there are strong debates and questions about the extraordinary breakthroughs in science such as cloning, in communications through the Internet with its never ending pool of knowledge, and the increasing level of immersion in entertainment. People facing the 21st century are trying to determine whether these new realities of life will enhance it and bring life as they know it to a great unprecedented level, or if these new products will contribute and perhaps even cause the destruction of society and life. To many cloning, censoring, and total immersion entertainment are new, but to those who have read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the topics are reminiscent of the horror that is found in Huxley's fictional utopian world where the dehumanizing of man is achieved in the interests of "Community, Identity, Stability," the world state's motto.
1.) The Savage Reservation is similar to the Utopia world in several ways. They both have drugs that are designed to calm people down. Soma, used in the Utopia and mescal used in the Reservation. They both also have a separation within their own society. The Utopia has social castes and the reservation has separation between the men and women, the men having more power. The two worlds also both have ceremonies. The Utopia has the orgy porgy ceremony in which everyone gathers around and has an orgy, hence the name. The Savage Reservation has traditional dancing ceremonies like the many traditional Indian tribes have today. The two cultures have many similar ideas, just expressed a little differently.
In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the development of children. In controlling the development of its children, China is also controlling the population levels. In any country, controlling the amount of children a single family can have can dramatically decrease the population levels. Just by having birth control pills and abortion clinics there for anybody to take advantage of shows that the involvement of either government is already too high.
Aldous Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World is more than a warning against the dangers of technology; it is a prediction for the future that rings eerily true. Today we understand that many of the fantastical devices and practices imagined by Huxley are coming to life. Most notable is the practice of in vitro fertilization, something that was a mad scientist’s dream during Huxley’s time, is today a commonplace practice. According to the National Institute of Health, in vitro fertilization is “the joining of a woman’s egg and man’s sperm in a laboratory dish” (Storck). The procedure was first performed successfully in 1978 and since has become widely used today by couples that desire a child and are unable to conceive by “natural” means. The idea of in vitro fertilization originated in the works of British geneticist and Oxford professor JBS Haldane (Milner). Haldane imagined the practice of “ectogenesis”, or pregnancy hosted in an artificial womb, in his 1924 book Daedalus (Rosen). Haldane’s book was the inspir...