Herman Melville 's Bartleby, The Scrivener

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, demonstrates the theme of isolation and going against the working world through his use of characterization and setting in 1853. Similarly, it was also around the same time when Marxism was causing a commotion, and George Gunn’s essay of “CRITIQUE OF MARXISM” in 1964 explains the theory and flaws behind it. Naomi C. Reed’s “The Specter of Wall Street: “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the Language of Commodities” and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” will help make connections between Herman Melville’s story and Marxism. Naomi C. Reed’s article will provide additional interpretation on Herman Melville’s work and historic content of what it was like during that time period. Anderson’s paper on “Imagined Communities” describes how nationalism came to be and why people are attached to it, where people shared the same ideology in a community. But, the behavior of Bartleby, shows that he is resistance toward his society under the capitalist rule which shows that he is supporting a belief similar to Marxism. This shows that capitalist society is flawed and should switch to a better type of system.

In “Bartleby, the Scrivener” the author, Herman Melville, uses indirect references to hint to many historical, literary, and biblical events. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” contains many allusions about important events that help connect this fictional story to actual events in Melville’s time period, before, and beyond. Melville uses allusions frequently throughout “Bartleby, the Scrivener” to help build connections with the real world and the fictitious world of this short story.

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, demonstrates the theme of isolation and going against the working world through his use of characterization and setting in 1853. Similarly, it was also around the same time when Marxism was causing a commotion, and the essay of “Critique of Marxism” in 1964 will explain the theory behind it. Naomi C. Reed’s “The Specter of Wall Street: “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the Language of Commodities” and Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” will help make connection between Herman Melville’s story and Marxism. Naomi C. Reed’s article will provide additional interpretation on Herman Melville’s work and historic content of what it was like during that time period. Anderson’s paper on “Imagined Communities”

In Herman Melville's short story, Bartleby the Scrivener the author portrays the action and reaction of his characters to form three important themes: Alienation, man’s desire to avoid conflict, and man’s desire to keep a free conscience. Some readers may infer that Herman is giving them an insight on specifically the way Bartleby mind works. However through Bartleby’s responses and reactions we learn more about the narrator, and is ironically where the themes arise. From the time Herman wrote this short story in 1853 to todays society in 2015 we can still see the appearance of theses themes.

We can never be one hundred percent certain of the validity of our literary analyses. This is especially the case with Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”. Critics have been trying for decades to make sense of the text and most will describe it as “inscrutable”. I don’t claim to know better than the critics, but instead offer my own interpretation of the work. Based on my observations and analysis, Melville’s use of many elements in his story—first and foremost the character of Bartleby, but also the dead letters, the many walls of Wall Street, and the state of Wall Street itself—works well to develop a sense of hopelessness, whether intentional or not, in the story as well as the narrator and consequently the reader. This

The reader is left with numerous questions. For example, what does Bartley thing and how does he motivate his behavior? Why cannot he compromise as the majority of people and agree with the working conditions? What does the scrivener prefer to? None of these riddles is explainable for the past century. For decades, critics have disputed how to understand and explain the character of the scrivener. The attempts to give the accurate explanation of Bartleby behavior and thoughts will be vain because very little information is revealed by the author and the narrator. But who is Bartleby? Many critics interpreted him as a universal symbol of Melville’s life or the author himself. Widmer is sure that, “In sum, writer Bartleby is writer Melville and expresses the author’s sense of despair in mid-nineteenth century America which allowed little recognition or place to a serious, critical and pessimistic artist” (p. 446). Bartleby’s silent and inexplicable resistance brings isolation to him not only from his colleagues but also from the rest of the world. The scrivener does not present insulting or disdainful manners but his challenging tone and the phrase “I prefer not to” seem to mock at the boss and the society in the

In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby,” most of the characters either fall on the spectrum of desiring power or submitting to the power of others. However, the title character, Bartleby, manages to avoid either of those positions, and instead denounces any kind of power. Bartleby’s passive resistance to his work on Wall St. is his way of attempting to break free not just from the authority of the Lawyer, but the authority of conventional society as a whole.

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 into a wealthy family. In 1832 the death of his father led his family into poverty which caused Melville to leave school. After leaving school Melville began working immediately to support his family. Then at the age of 22 Melville set sail aboard a whaling vessel, and after his time as a whaler he enlisted in the navy. Melville’s time aboard many ships influenced his writing tremendously. His friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne also influenced him to write a masterpiece of American literature and one of the greatest novels of all time, Moby-Dick. A major theme of Moby-dick is sexuality. Melville does not hold back when discussing homoerotic and sexual topics in the novel. Nonetheless the intense language used in the novel helped it become such a remarkable and well -known novel today. Herman Melville’s influences for Moby-Dick along with the homoerotic themes found in the novel leads many

Herman Melville was a successful author that wrote historically valued books such as “Billy Budd: Sailor”, “Omoo”, “Typee”, and “Moby Dick.”

“Bartleby the Scrivener” delves into the life of a worker at a New York City Law firm. Herman Melville provides a drab and bleak outlook on the conditions of labor and mental state of the workers at the firm. Though the story can be seen as a depiction of the isolation and lack of passion found in big city labor, I believe that Melville provides much more in his writing. Within the details provided in the story, he manages to forge a metaphor for the power of transcendental ideals such as self reliance and choice within a society. He illustrates a culture run not by one’s own beliefs, but rather the generalized other and people plagued by authoritarian ideals. By the end of the tale of Bartleby and his influence within the firm Melville strives to change society by informing the reader of the importance of non-conformity and belief in one’s ideals, but also the danger of following through with that in society.

In literature, the truly memorable characters are those special individuals that arouse powerful emotions in the reader. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick contains a man who is among the unforgettable characters of literature: Ahab, sea-captain of the whaling ship the Pequod. Ahab is a mysterious figure to Ishmael, the narrator of the tale, at first. Despite the captain’s initial reclusiveness, Ishmael gradually comes to understand the kind of man that Ahab is and, most importantly, the singular obsession he possesses: finding the white whale, Moby Dick, the beast that bit off his leg. The hunt for Moby Dick (and, correspondingly, the idea that Moby Dick represents) is the critical component of Ahab’s personality, and Melville makes that all-important idea known to the reader very quickly. Melville richly characterizes Ahab, a man solely devoted to taking his revenge on Moby Dick, through the use of literary devices, such as allusion, metaphor, and simile, as well as Ahab’s own words to develop Ahab’s personality and aid the reader in understanding the man himself, the driving force behind the Pequod’s fateful whaling voyage.

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the white whale has been a representation of many things, including God, nature and specific origins of life that are beyond the control of mankind. The quest to hunt down Moby- Dick by the Pequod is seen as symbolic. For Ahab, slaying the sperm whale is the main goal in his life. This can be extended symbolically so that the sperm whale represents everybody’s goals. His vengeance towards the sperm whale is similar to man’s struggle in contradiction of destiny. The only way out from Ahab’s vision is often seen through the Pequod’s unusual meetings, called gams, with other ships. Upon finishing this novel, the only representation that Moby Dick itself can be seen as, is a goal. Melville implies that humans in general need to have a goal in life, or stating that such a goal can destroy one if no one ever attains it. Although this novel was revolved around a white whale, it was not the only sea creature that played an important role. The white whale was not the only life lesson represented in Melville’s Moby Dick, I argue that the giant squid carries numerous representations, the sharks represent human nature and the brit represent human consciousness.

In this paper I plan to discuss,That one of the main characters in Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick, Captain Ahab is clearly something in between a Promethean and Satanic figure.On the other hand, State that Ahab is the protagonist that Melville wanted to present in the novel. Furthermore, that Melville undoubtedly made Ahab’s character fit into the novel as a whole because the novel is revolving around Ahab and his own personal madness and vendetta with the whale Moby Dick, along with him taking his crew on his own tragic ending journey, which is the ultimate judgement Ishmael and Herman Melville are trying to make. Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick is a significant character. He is the Commander of the whaling boat the Pequod , the journey all began when while on a whaling mission , Ahab 's leg was gnawed off by the infamous white whale Moby Dick, and following the time since then, Ahab has concentrated just on the reprisal he will get when he kills Moby Dick, animosity maybe being the reason of Captain Ahab 's multiple personalities. However, It is the customary thought that Captain Ahab bestows the uncommon wicked elements like that of satan, However, the true Ahab is revealed clearly through the text

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is one of the most esteemed pieces of American literature. Highly saturated with symbols, philosophical cogitations, and seemingly verbose digressions from plot, Moby Dick takes an unconventional approach in presenting the story surrounding a monomaniacal captain and his doomed pursuit of a whale. Melville crafts his novel mainly around how the bystander figure of Ishmael experienced it, and by doing so unfolds the story, and the raw emotions captured throughout, into a more comprehensive experience. As an outsider, slowly working his ways into the mysteries of whaling and the Pequod, Ishmael seeks meaning and a physical grasp on the world, but as the story unfolds the reader sees from glimpses of his

Melville takes us on a figurative journey of language by writing his way through a variety of tones in a way that, one would say, an artist might explore every combination of colors to create his/her masterpiece. The main tone in Moby-Dick, however, is one that is considerate and affectionate, with a hint of comic relief. This is the tone that Ishmael, or Melville, regularly personifies when he is considering scenes of whaling and sailing that are nearest and dearest to him. Often enough, this thoughtful, self-mocking humor that Melville uses when discussing the features of a seafaring life can turn into hostile sarcasm without any warning: “The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” (1.10). Both the gentler comedy and the contemptuous sarcasm can vanish when Melville wants to invoke the complex literary qualities and symbolic register of Moby-Dick. By validating to the reader how effortless it is for him to fluctuate between the grand "flood-gates of the wonder-world" and the comical "damp, drizzly November" of Ishmael’s soul, Melville gets to parade his superior writing skills. Such a simple example can go to show that nothing about Moby-Dick is straightforward – possibly the least of all being the point of