“Bartleby, the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street”
The story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street”, by Herman Melville, published in 1853, introduces a narrator who is also a character in the story, and his existential emergence that is born due to Bartleby’s character. By examining two specific passages in detail and connecting those to the entire story, I will argue that the separation between privacy and society, demonstrated by the screen in the chamber, represents an internal struggle which ultimately leads to Bartleby’s death.
Tools such as high and embellished language, superfluous synonyms, repetition of certain words, and detailed descriptions of all surroundings, allows one to experience the story through the narrator’s eyes and connect to his emotions. The repetition of the words “reason” that is mentioned fourteen times in the story, and the word “common” that is mentioned twelve times, each echoes what is the sensible, correct, objectively true …show more content…
Because Bartleby lives within “privacy”, he is free to do as he pleases, without having to give into society’s rules; “from behind the screen the usual answer, ‘I prefer not to’” (page 14). Bartleby displays an act of repudiation towards society in an active way, since he renounces society’s ordinance of rules, and yet he does so in a nonviolent manner; “a passive resistance” (page 11), that is “harmless” (page 11).
There is a violation of Bartleby’s truth because it differs from society’s view, and therefore, the narrator is conflicted between what is right according to rules, and what is right according to his internal instincts. While the narrator sees Bartleby as “a human creature” (page 14) who does not have “the common infirmities of our nature” (page 14), he also feels that to side with Bartleby “will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my[his] conscience” (page
The story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street”, by Herman Melville, published in 1853, introduces a narrator who is also a character in the story, and his existential emergence that is born due to Bartleby’s character. By examining two specific passages in detail and connecting those to the entire story, I will argue that the separation between privacy and society, demonstrated by the screen in the chamber, represents an internal struggle which ultimately leads to Bartleby’s death.
Tools such as high and embellished language, superfluous synonyms, repetition of certain words, and detailed descriptions of all surroundings, allows one to experience the story through the narrator’s eyes and connect to his emotions. The repetition of the words “reason” that is mentioned fourteen times in the story, and the word “common” that is mentioned twelve times, each echoes what is the sensible, correct, objectively true …show more content…
Because Bartleby lives within “privacy”, he is free to do as he pleases, without having to give into society’s rules; “from behind the screen the usual answer, ‘I prefer not to’” (page 14). Bartleby displays an act of repudiation towards society in an active way, since he renounces society’s ordinance of rules, and yet he does so in a nonviolent manner; “a passive resistance” (page 11), that is “harmless” (page 11).
There is a violation of Bartleby’s truth because it differs from society’s view, and therefore, the narrator is conflicted between what is right according to rules, and what is right according to his internal instincts. While the narrator sees Bartleby as “a human creature” (page 14) who does not have “the common infirmities of our nature” (page 14), he also feels that to side with Bartleby “will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my[his] conscience” (page