The literary movement of romanticism in the 1800s had various influential writers that contributed a great deal to society. Works from the Romantics like Melville, Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelly had a very large impact on other writers and their writing styles. Many commonalities among their works created the expression of romanticism. Themes like optimism, nature, new life, and change, or lack thereof, came about. This is evident throughout the romanticism time period. Two works that have comparable themes are Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. The theme of transformation echoes through each of their works and links them in the romanticism era. The theme of transformation in Bartleby,
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The narrator of the poem writes about the west wind in the hopes of gaining its power in order to spread his ideas. He writes of how powerful the wind is and what it can do, like planting seeds. He states that "the winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow" which shows how the wind is able to do things as if it was human (Shelley, 1992). He wants the wind to send his ideas out, since it has the power to move things, and hopefully inspire others. He sees the wind as this entity that can transform him, which is what he ultimately wants. He wants to be transformed into the powerful spirit that it is and when he knows he cannot become that he wants the wind to use him as an instrument to broadcast his ideas and prophesy. Other notions of transformation are in the poem as well. He discusses how the wind brings an autumn storm. The storm brings with it a transformation of the environment, everything will be effected. This idea reinforces the power of the wind because it’s showing that the wind has the power to transform all it touches. In all, both works display the theme of transformation. This goes along the lines of other romanticism works. Other writers discuss the ideas of transformation, nature, new life, and optimism in their poems and stories. Melville’s story revolved around the idea of resistance to change that eventually
The narrator of the poem writes about the west wind in the hopes of gaining its power in order to spread his ideas. He writes of how powerful the wind is and what it can do, like planting seeds. He states that "the winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow" which shows how the wind is able to do things as if it was human (Shelley, 1992). He wants the wind to send his ideas out, since it has the power to move things, and hopefully inspire others. He sees the wind as this entity that can transform him, which is what he ultimately wants. He wants to be transformed into the powerful spirit that it is and when he knows he cannot become that he wants the wind to use him as an instrument to broadcast his ideas and prophesy. Other notions of transformation are in the poem as well. He discusses how the wind brings an autumn storm. The storm brings with it a transformation of the environment, everything will be effected. This idea reinforces the power of the wind because it’s showing that the wind has the power to transform all it touches. In all, both works display the theme of transformation. This goes along the lines of other romanticism works. Other writers discuss the ideas of transformation, nature, new life, and optimism in their poems and stories. Melville’s story revolved around the idea of resistance to change that eventually