In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” the setting contributes to the tone, the style, the theme and particularly the characterization of Bartleby, a scrivener working for the narrator. The parallelism between the setting and the attributes of Bartleby is suggested in the description of the...
Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” presents the mentally troubled title character through the perspective of an ignorant narrator. Having only encountered visible, physical disabilities before, the narrator does not know how to respond to a man with depression. Driven mad by...
The narrator and Bartleby – principle characters of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener – are opposite sides of the same coin. Their perspectives and connections to life seem to be similar. However, the narrator thrives in the post-revolutionary, post-industrial, capitalistic society. Bartleby, oppositely, wastes away...
“Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to...
Authoritarianism, Bartleby, Dead letter office, Herman Melville, Isolation and loneliness, Modernity, Passive Resistance, Postmodernity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Romanticism
Herman Melville uses the concept of identity to highlight certain features of the characters in his short story Bartelby the Scrivener. The character of Bartelby illuminates the narrator’s unexplained feelings of innate compassion and pity through his actions of passive resistance. Made-to-order essay as fast...
Through Bartleby the Scrivener Story, Melville has successfully portrayed an eccentric but also extremely pitiful Bartleby character. A character goes against everything normal just because he ‘prefers’. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences...
In Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway and “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, both pieces of literature contain a technique called minimalism, an extreme simplicity used to iterate a deeper meaning in the text. Both authors use this writing style to their advantage....
The characters of many poems, stories, and other works of art act as critics or representations of the author’s society. American writers Benjamin Franklin and Herman Melville both commented on their respective eras using this method. Franklin uses Poor Richard in “The Way to Wealth”...
Though the title may be Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville’s short story is much more concerned with its nameless narrator than its title character. Addressing one man’s concept of himself and how that concept must be reevaluated when challenged by disruption, Bartleby depicts a man...
Living in the 21th century, with unprecedented material abundance, we post-modern people, on the one hand, feel lucky to be blessed with the glories of this productive industrial era; on the other hand, however, we are frequently confronted with the problem of relocating ourselves in...
Written by Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivener, is a short story that tells the tale of a fortunate lawyer on Wall Street who hires a scrivener named Bartleby to serve for his law firm. In the beginning, he is an excellent copyist but as the...
Written by Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivener, is a short story that tells the tale of a fortunate lawyer on Wall Street who hires a scrivener named Bartleby to serve for his law firm. In the beginning, he is an excellent copyist but as the...
In Lois Lowry’s award winning novel “The Giver,” the main character, Jonas, wonders incredulously, “How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made” (Lowry 48). Jonas is referring to the community in which he lives, a controlled...
Living in the 21th century, with unprecedented material abundance, we post-modern people, on the one hand, feel lucky to be blessed with the glories of this productive industrial era; on the other hand, however, we are frequently confronted with the problem of relocating ourselves in...
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville is the story of a scrivener (a copyist) who has an unusually bleak disposition. Eventually, he takes it upon himself to refuse his boss’ (the narrator’s) requests for completing the very work for which he was hired. The story,...
The abstract notion of fulfillment is one that creates a never ending search. The issue that prevails is that it is intangible and therefore cannot be classified with the least bit of certainty. Society on the other hand, is run by the rule of mathematics,...
Mordechai Anielewicz once asserted, “The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil: he becomes a slave in body and soul.” In...
Bartleby, Dead letter office, Human, Human condition, Human nature, Isolation and loneliness, Lawyer, Money and Work, Passive Resistance, Personal life
The 19th century was a time of great development, especially so in the realm of knowledge and representation of disability in literature. Although physical disabilities receive the majority of the attention, mental illness does appear in many works even though it may not be openly...
Nippers, Ginger Nut, Turkey, Bartleby, The Narrator
Date and Author
1853, by Herman Melville
Genre
Short story
Plot
The narrator, a successful Wall Street lawyer, hires a scrivener named Bartleby to copy legal documents. Though Bartleby is initially a hard worker, one day, when asked to proofread, he responds, “I would prefer not to.” As time progresses, Bartleby increasingly “prefers not to” do anything asked of him. Eventually he dies of self-neglect, refusing offers of help, while jailed for vagrancy.
Theme
"Bartleby, the Scrivener" examines themes such as isolation, passive resistance, and the failure of communication.
Characters
The Narrator, Bartleby, Turkey, Nippers, Ginger Nut, The new tenants and the landlord, The Grub-man.
Background
Melville wrote “Bartleby” at a time when his career seemed to be in ruins, and the story reflects his pessimism. Bartleby may represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story is "about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions." Bartleby may also represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.
Popularity
Though no great success at the time of publication, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is now among the most noted of American short stories. It has been considered a precursor of absurdist literature. Numerous critical essays have been published about the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as "unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon. On November 5, 2019, the BBC News listed "Bartleby, the Scrivener" on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Quotes
“I would prefer not to.”
“Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.”
“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”
“To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.”
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