the Scrivener

and discrimination is a universal experience amongst the working class as all jobs have cultural stigmas. In the short story, Bartleby the Scrivener, and the novel, Mildred Pierce, the connection between professional, socioeconomic, and personal identities is explored as varied parts of an individual in relation to the whole of society. In Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, Bartleby is a lifeless, “cadaverous” person who, with repetitive diction, is depicted similar to a ghost. In the…

In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the narrator who runs a business on the Wall Street told us about the story of a scrivener who worked for him named Bartleby. He finished tons of copying and sometimes would not even take a rest from his duties. One day, Bartleby refused to do his duties when asked by his boss. He also stopped doing his duties and did not want to make changes to himself. This echoes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, where Emerson argued about…

Wall Street Resistance In Bartleby, the Scrivener, Melville is depicting Bartleby’s desire to resist anything that is asked of him. When Bartleby is first hired by the lawyer, he complies to the lawyer’s requests and works on his documents. After some time, Bartleby politely declines a request made of him, which he continues to do. Bartleby’s actions of resistance to society led him to face dire consequences. By facing societies’ pressures and not conforming to society, Bartleby offered an…

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” is a story of class differences; the narrator, a representative of the educated class, is unable to understand Bartleby, a representative of the working class. Melville demonstrates the economic differences between these two classes through the contrast between the narrator’s life of ease and Bartleby’s life of incessant hard work in the beginning of the story. Moreover, power differences between the classes are displayed through…

The Wickedness of Man Even the most innocent acts can irritate a person’s mental wellbeing. The sinister side of man can be revealed if pushed too far. In “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, Melville displays the dark side of man through the narrator as Bartleby slowly drives him crazy. Bartleby’s ordinary and passive personality in the office catches the narrator off guard. He has a hard time communicating with Bartleby’s submissive behavior, which makes it difficult for everyone to…

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville can be interpreted in multiple ways. The idea most clearly represented is that the story of Bartleby is a response to transcendentalism as expressed through Emerson and Thoreau. A common attribute seen in authors of transcendentalism writings is a passive resistance or refusal to cooperate and preferring not to do something. Bartleby is also a passive resister, he doesn’t like to do anything, but this only gets him into trouble. Bartleby the Scrivener…

Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville is a short story that provokes readers to question what it truly means to be human. The depiction of Melville’s characters and emphasis of specific objects throughout the story become symbolic representations of human existence. Readers are compelled to understand human existence through the narrator’s recollection of Bartleby’s character. The relationship shared between the narrator and Bartleby plays an important role in the development of the story…

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville are two shorts stories that seem hard to compare and analyze together when read once. The plots seem to have no similarities. Although Kafka and Melville may have created two completely different stories, they have many similarities though different aspects. Similarities can be found between the main characters in the two stories, the narrative point of views, the theme, and symbols. The main character in The…

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,…

waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of” (Melville). The first instance Bartleby steps into the office, the narrator already has the motive to isolate Bartleby from the rest of the office: “I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of them” (Melville). We can already see that the lawyer did not want his “bad scriveners” corrupting this newcomer. As we…