Last Statement Of The Narrator In Bartleby The Scrivener

“Bartleby is blind but he sees. The lawyer has eyesight but he is blind. Unlike Bartleby, he does not know where he is. He is in prison without knowing it. He has learned nothing. He has gained no insight into himself or into his society, and he has gained no understanding of Bartleby’s rebellion. He has denied his own capacity to love. What remains is only the sentimentality that emerges in his final words of pity and self-pity. “Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!” (Melville, p. 45) (Shulman, p. 22)

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.

As the story continues, his sympathy for Bartleby’s predicament develops. Throughout paragraph 90, the lawyer discovers that Bartleby resides in the office and feels pity towards how Bartleby sustains such “ miserable friendlessness and loneliness.” Readers can acknowledge how the Lawyer struggles with maintaining the changing attitudes he feels towards Bartleby: “melancholy merge into fear” and “pity into repulsion” (137). The Lawyer intended to fire Bartleby for his refusal to work, but did not, for he feared of being portrayed as a “villain” (138). According to Jack Getman, the Lawyer has “become a different, more appealing person, one who is more responsive to the needs and rights of his workers” (Getman 738). It is evident that the Lawyer undergoes many changes in the interest of Bartleby.

“Bartleby, The Scrivener” is a memorable story, by Herman Melville, that is able to keep its readers captivated from beginning to end. How does the author successfully grab the attention of his readers? The author utilized his masterful command of the English language to convey the characters, setting, and plot effectively; and in the midst of all the detailed descriptions Melville have used food and the action of eating as powerful symbols. In the story three of the characters have names that are associated with food, and the main character of study, Bartleby, eventually dies of starvation by choice. Given the setting of the story was in the onset of the second industrial revolution, the coming of the big corporations where Wall

The lawyer portrays his self-interest when he moves his office and abandons Bartleby, due to his negative affect on the business. Because Bartleby continues to annoyingly dawdle around the old office, the lawyer attempts to rid the building of Bartleby, for the lawyer is "fearful of being exposed" (1201) and criticized by the public. Clearly, the lawyer speaks to Bartleby in hopes of relieving himself from any

In both “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Young Goodman Brown”, we find themes and characteristics of “Dark Romanticism”. They represent characters who do not completely know what the most right thing to do is. But what both these works do is create an urge in the reader to wish for perfection. These two stories are more like bridges to transcendentalism. Even though the dark romanticism period in the New England led by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson did not fully embrace transcendentalism, these two stories particularly leave the reader wanting and pondering more. The human mind works in a complex way and it has to be prepared for certain things to emerge. These two stories serve as a mirror that will help us to look within us for something more divine, that will help us find a greater understanding of what we ought to do.

The character of Bartleby in Herman Melville’s novella “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” is a person who refuses to become an object in capitalistic society. Initially, he is the perfect example of the objectification and mechanization of humans in the workplace. In essence, Bartleby is a machine that continually produces. Ultimately, he begins to resist the mind numbing repetition of his tasks and the mechanization of his life. The other main character, the narrator, is a facilitator of the capitalistic machine. He dehumanizes his employees by ensuring that their free will is denied in the workplace using objectifying nicknames, providing a workplace devoid of human touch and connection,; and perpetuating mechanized, repetitive work. Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” shows the dehumanizing effects of working in a capitalistic environment and ultimately suggests that one must conform to a standard way of life or will cease to exist.

Bartleby does not want to be a part of the world, he is used to changing into a more industrial world. He tries to refuse to fall into the trap that others have fallen into. Some would say that he is doing this because he may have a mental illness. There are all different kinds of mental illnesses and back then during the time of Bartleby they were not treated like they are today; many were not even diagnosed back then, society out cast these unfortunate people as being weird. A mental illness that makes him not want to be a part of society. Hannah Walser says, “an apparently “mind blind” character like Bartleby not only represents a pathological condition-autism or something like it- but constitutes a kind of textual pathology; a devotion from fiction evolutionary mandate” (Walser 313-314). Rereading this short story after hearing this quote; makes reader’s realize the signs that

There are many ways someone can interpret “Bartleby the Scrivener”. I think throughout the story the narrator (the Lawyer) is the more sympathetic character.

This book presents two individuals, named Richard and Perry, who strived to do a few things once they were out of prison that were very horrific, and unbearable which by any means is not permissible. During and after the killings of the Clutter family, Perry comes to his senses and speaks on the aftermath of what these killings have brought upon him. “The sounds of breathing, the gasps, the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed windpipe. When Perry said, “I think there must be something wrong with us,” he was making an admission he “hated to make” (110). Criminals who admit on their behavior. The position becomes, are they human beings anymore, or are they dehumanized? The fact that Perry Smith comes to the realization that they are demented, should they be given a chance? The level of detail that speaks

While all people like to believe they are virtuous and honorable, it is often not the case. In fact, many would rather stand by and watch as unjust treatment occur, thinking it would not affect them. These people, known collectively as bystanders, are present at the event, but choose to not take part in it. They often feel remorse for the sufferer, yet would not lend a hand in fear of becoming one. In “The Hangman”, a narrative poem by Maurice Ogden, and Eve Bunting’s “Terrible Things”,figurative language is used to emphasize the significance of bystanders. These literary devices help develop several cruel yet irrefutable themes.

Melville’s short story Bartleby the scrivener, describes the narrator as an elderly old man that wishes to give details of the life of Bartleby the scrivener. Bartleby was a completely emotionless human being who refuses to interact with the world around him. These actions shape the short story, picking at its viewers mind as to why Bartleby is disconnected from society. Bartleby worked in the dead letters office this may have triggered his inability to relate to the world around him. This motionless docility covered his inner troubles that he withheld from the world. The narrator states “I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep.” (Melville’s). In this he means that many persons might choose to smile as they find pleasure in reading “Bartleby” as much as those who might weep because they find the short story to be discouraging. In the 1970’s adaptation is one of those sentimental souls that the narrator is talking about in that it weeps for Bartleby, however the narrator brings the humor to life as he becomes speechless to Bartleby preferring not to do his work.

People live with inherent problems; the choices they make define their identity. William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” and John Milton’s “Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent” both deal with speakers displeased by their conditions. While “The World…” follows a speaker troubled by his contemporaries’ indifference of nature, “Sonnet 19…” chronicles a speaker’s struggles with his blindness and servitude to God. Through these poems’ similar point of view and structure, the speakers of Wordsworth’s and Milton’s poems create characters with control over their choices. However, they stem from fundamentally different complaints about God in contrast to nature (or the lack thereof), and result in distinctive metaphors.

He dies a bitter lonely man because he couldn?t handle the truth that good people sometimes do bad things. ?They carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.? (206)

Finally, the notion of suffering plays an interesting role in Martineau’s story. Marshall’s death, “the close of [her] very long life, was not altogether so serene as the character of its days of vigour might seem to deserve” (Martineau 125). In spite of her frugality and her staunch insistence on personal responsibility, she dies nearly penniless, with only enough money to pay for her funeral. She exists this way as a result of her refusal to depend on the charity of others, public or private. It seems in many ways that it was part of her duty, her responsibility, in Martineau’s eyes that she suffer without protest and without complaint. Martineau firmly placed the blame on the system, however, not on Marshall’s choices.