...Bartleby the Scrivener The meaningful projection in this story is the walls. These walls are symptoms of separation and represent Bartleby's separation from both reality and people. This set the tone for the story, as the relationships with each other seem to be purely professional in nature. This impersonality of the characters is significant - the business based world in which they operate has no room for personal interaction. Nothing is learned about any of the characters beyond what they are like in the office. The walls serve as a safe haven for Bartleby, as he is in a world with societal expectations and he chooses not to conform and the walls, in essence, allow him to retreat into a world of his own, thus protecting himself from those who may think he is a threat to their own materially oriented world. It is as though I am involved in trying to deal personally with Bartleby, a sensation that keeps me fully engaged with the story as it heads toward its tragic ending. "Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby" (Litz,1994, p.165-166). "I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet" (Litz,1994, p.166). After Bartleby dies, alone and imprisoned, I learn a little of his past; apparently he worked in the dead letter office. Could it be that this depressing job affected Bartleby's sanity? Bartleby died of sadness...
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...Melvin’s Bartleby the Scrivener tells the story of a new employee of a Law Firm on Wall Street. Everything in this story embodies my fear of my future profession. A scrivener is someone who serves as a scribe. Bartleby is a new scribe to this law firm and works day and night handwriting copies of legal documents. The lawyer describes Bartleby as an excellent worker whose work output is tremendous. Along with Bartleby are 3 other employees. Turkey is another scrivener who is described by the lawyer as being excellent in the morning; however, as the day goes on he becomes less efficient and more prone to making mistakes. Nipper is a second scrivener who is simply described as a young ambitious man and a steady worker. Ginger Nut is a young errand boy whose primary role is going to pick up ginger nut cakes. Bartleby continues to work day and night to producing perfect copies of legal documents pleasing the lawyer greatly. One day, the lawyer comes in asking Bartleby to examine a document and Bartleby responds to his plea with “I’d prefer not to.” The lawyer is baffled with this response and delegates the work to Nipper. Bartleby continues to repeat this phrase when delegated task to the point he is not getting any work done. The lawyer realizes Bartleby has been living in his office for weeks. He discovers that Bartleby has no family, friends, nor a life outside of his employment. The lawyer is forced to terminate Bartleby’s employment and asks him to leave, yet Bartleby again says...
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...Cody Costa English 2110-WW1 Unit 12 4/29/2015 Journal 12 The reading in Unit 12 was a work call, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” which was written by the American author Herman Melville. This short story is about an older lawyer from New York who is also the narrator, who is telling a story about a strange man he used to know. The man’s name is Bartleby, and the lawyer hired him for work. Both the narrator and Bartleby are inscrutable throughout the entire story. It is hard to understand or interpret the thoughts and ideas of these two men. Also because they are both so inscrutable they sometime don’t even understand each other. After reading “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, many people wonder if the narrator, the old lawyer, understands Bartleby’s character. Bartleby’s character begins to fall of more and more until the very end of the story until his death. The narrator did understand him at first when he is first hired. After initially hired Bartleby is doing a great volume of work while also producing great quality work. Later on the narrator asked him to do something else and this is the moment when the understanding of Bartleby by the narrator stopped. When asked this, Bartleby responded with his famous response, “I would prefer not.” Throughout the rest of the story no matter how hard the narrator tried to get through to him he just could not. The narrator states that nothing makes him as angry as a person that is, “passive resistance.” When...
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...Bartleby has been noted to be a millstone, pale, and unmoving man that worked as a scrivener. If the words used to describe his character hadn’t tipped you off, Bartleby is not the best employee. He would often reply, “I would prefer not to” when asked to complete most tasks, he was allowed to reside in the office. The narrator does quite frequently contemplate the ways in which he can get Bartleby to leave; however, he rarely acts on them. On the occasions where the narrator does choose to act on a plan to rid himself of Bartleby he rarely follows through. In the end Bartleby would be allowed to stay in the office. On page 16 this is seen at a height, the narrator leaves his office based on Bartleby’s request. The whole idea that this would occur seems slightly ridiculous. What is it about Bartleby that he is able to have this affect on the narrator? At first it made sense that some leniency would be given to Bartleby. The narrator stated, “I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands.” This suggests that, in the beginning at least, Bartleby was able to create quality copies. Therefore, at first giving into his, “I would prefer not to”, replies was not so bad. The other copiers were able to read through the papers and run, as Bartleby would have. However, after a while Bartleby stops copying. By the time he should be able to copy again, he still refused. On page 21 the narrator does tell Bartleby that in six days he is supposed to be gone. When that sixth day come...
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...Alyssa Rife AP Lit 1 8-27-13 “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a short story about a lawyer who employs a copyist, named Bartleby, who works diligently for a few days, but then begins to refuse to comply with any of the requests that the lawyer makes. Level One- At what time of the day were Nippers and Turkey at their worst and best behaved? Level Two- What are the effects of Bartleby’s behavior on the other characters as the story progresses? Level Three- At the end of the story, the lawyer hints that Bartleby’s behavior may have been linked to his past work. What is the emotional impact of working with death on a person? 2.) The lawyer is the most impacted by Bartleby’s behavior. Not only does it fascinate him, but it leaves him questioning what he should do about the passive resistant man that refuses to do anything he asks. Throughout the story, the lawyer feels a variety of emotions towards Bartleby; including sympathy, pity, frustration, and resentment. He feels sympathy and pity towards the copyists when he realizes that he is living in the office, and only eating ginger nuts. But when the copyist refuses to accept help from the lawyer or continue to copy documents, the lawyer begins to feel a sense of frustration. He doesn’t want to put Bartleby out on the streets without a place to stay, but he also does not want to be made a fool of. 3.) The lawyer mentions a rumor he heard about Bartleby that said he worked in the Dead Letter Office in Washington before he came...
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...comparatively mild. So that Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time.” Since the narrator pays attention so much it helps us to understand that the story will develop slowly and why Bartleby makes him so curious. One of the main characters in the story is Bartleby. From details in the story like when his boss asks him to look over the things he copied and he refuses, you can tell he is not going to do anything he does not want to whether it is his job unless you force him. Bartleby makes one change by the end of the story and that is he will not talk to Mr. B. anymore. His character is negative because he does not do the things his boss needs him to like go to the post office, go over his work, or leave. This shocks his employer at first but ends up frustrating him. For example, “I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations.” I think the setting of a lawyer’s office gives off the feeling of normalness. This helps the story because you can quickly identify that it will not be. One of the details that help me see a scene is when he describes the interior of his office after hiring Bartleby. He says “I should have stated before that ground glass folding doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself.” This helps me to envision the office so clearly because when I was younger...
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...In “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Herman Melville tells a tale about Bartleby, who works for a law office and abruptly refuses to write. When the narrator, the boss, asks for the reason, all Bartleby says is “I would prefer not to”. The narrator migrates his office to get rid of Bartleby after a long stretch of thought. Toward the end of the story, Bartleby refuses to eat and starves himself to death in prison. In spite of the fact that Bartleby is dead, his soul is still alive as the narrator is spooked by his otherworldly pride and is at battle with the standards of equity and profound quality of the rest of his life. Bartleby is a saint. He not only exhibits his braveness by going up against the unreasonable society, utilizing his self-control,...
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...Here are my answers to the questions of Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville 1. The Boss who is also the narrator is up against Bartleby unwillingness to do what he is paid for. At first he does all his copying but when he is asked to check his work with the original copy, Bartleby simply refuse. The Boss feels frustrated by Bartleby’s answer but yet keep him longer to see if he’ll change, which he doesn’t and the Boss is force to move his business because Bartleby refuse to leave the place. In the story, Bartleby represents freedom as he chooses not to do anything. We can observe a couple of society statement, the narrator represent “normality” in which normal people seek social status and fortune, but on the other hand, Bartleby is the opposite as he does not seek any social status or interaction at all, he has lost his humanity and chooses to let go of everything. However, I read other Melville stories and I know that Melville often represent himself in his own stories. Here, Melville is represented by Bartleby. The narrator sees himself as normal making every other character in the story different from normal. Nippers has a “disease” for being ambitious and Turkey is annoying because he is “too energetic” but put together they are useful. Both represent different type of peoples we can easily find in our everyday world. They aren’t likable or sympathetic characters but because of their extreme behavior, they only make the scene less dark than it would be without...
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...The Lottery and Bartleby, the Scrivener Gothic Literature is known for its presentation of hidden darkness of the human condition. The appearance of Gothic literature can often include parts that shock or place terror in the reader. However, its important to also understand that the human condition can be determined while reading different pieces of Gothic literature. In the short stories Bartleby, the Scrivener, written by Herman Melville and The Lottery, written by Shirley Jackson are both pieces of Gothic literature that can compare to each other because they discover different human conditions. When reading The Lottery we are introduced to a beautiful summer day, where the residents of a small town gather for an event known as the lottery. Mr. Summers is the man who controls the lottery and who is the man to bring the black box to the gathering area. While Mr.Summers stands and shuffles the papers inside it, the residents make sure they are carful to keep distance from the box. The residents are joined by Tessie Hutchinson the main character and who is Bill Hutchinson's wife, when the lottery begins the men are called by their family names to draw from the black box. Old Man Warner who is the oldest man in town criticizes that the lottery is necessary for a good harvest, and that people in the other towns are stupid for entertaining the idea. Once the drawing is finished, Mr.Summers directs that the men look at their paper to see who has been picked. It has been revealed...
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...In the story Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville shows the reader that everyone has different problems. The main one has to do with Bartleby. This is easy to tell if you pay attention to the actions of Bartleby throughout the book. In the book, Bartleby’s main problem was depression. You can tell that he gets depressed especially when he goes through all of the horrible life events such as, becoming blind and losing his place to stay. In the book Bartleby the Scrivener, the narrator shows us that depression has different effects on different people. When people have obstacles thrown at them, they have to understand them before it overcomes them. They never know what’s going to happen until it happens and what they are going to do when it does...
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...“Bartleby the Scrivener” and “A Sorrowful Woman” reflect each other in a lot of ways. They have very similar plots and both thematically show that ‘untreated mental illness can lead to death as is the fate of both characters at the end of their individual stories. “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville is a story that depicts the journey of a man withdrawn from society and refusing to adhere to societal norms. He does not crack despite numerous attempts to breach his seemingly tough armor. Although by a different author and of different circumstances, the woman in “A Sorrowful Woman” by Gail Godwin also rejects societal norms. She is fed up with the roles that society that society has imposed on her and is at breaking point, unable to adhere to societal specifications for the ideal mother and wife anymore. Analogous to the woman in the story by Gail Godwin, Bartleby is also unable to meet the criteria for societal acceptance. In the story, “Bartleby the Scrivener”, Bartleby is marginalized by societal norms in that he is first of all defined by his outward appearance. Even before having any contact with Bartleby, his employer describes him as “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, and incredibly forlorn”. All these traits are inferred simply from his looks, and as the saying goes, ‘First impressions matter the most’, so if his employer had already pegged him as wan, depressed, and melancholy even before having any interaction with him, it is no surprise that their relationship...
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...of a young man “Bartleby, the Scriver”, where life is meaningless to him. In this essay I will prove how Bartleby physically, mentally and verbally isolates himself from society and existence, and how gradually he loses the desire to live and the understanding of humanity. Bartleby starts to become mentally disturbed when he used to work at the Dead Letter Office in Washington. We learn at the conclusion of the story that Bartleby had worked there as a clerk reading the letters of people who were sick, needed help or money, or were going through extreme conditions and probably "died un hoping; good tiding for those who died of unrelieved calamities"(86). This explains Bartleby's mental condition and that it was only going to decay. This kind of work made him psychologically ill because, he wasn’t able to do any thing to help these people. The only thing he could do was to read and take that pain and make it his own. Bartleby was unconsciously repressing over these letters that were collecting in his mind. He was not even aware how all these dead letters became part of his life and eventually lead to mental disturbance and isolation. Another way Bartleby loses interest in life is torturing him self physically. When he leaves from his past job and finds a new job, which made his conditions only worse. From the beginning Bartleby is isolated within the confines of his work place. “I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though...
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...Rose Decker Professor Isabelle English 102-Bartleby Essay 28 March 2014 I enjoyed reading the short story Bartleby by Herman Melville. It was strange yet interesting. I liked how his characters contrasted each other and how he mixed humor and pity when creating his scrivener employees. Melville names one of his characters Turkey, an employee who is productive in the morning but drunk by the afternoon. Nippers, opposite of Turkey, had indigestion in the morning but worked calmly in the afternoon. That’s funny! Bartleby on the other hand, was a lost soul. I felt his loneliness and depression. Bartleby previously worked with death letters where he held in his hands items for the deceased. I can’t imagine how that would of felt, having death surround me continuously, day after day. I believe he was already disconnected from the world even before working under Melville’s employment. Being caged up in a small confined space and the dishonesty of the documents he is copying, brings Bartleby to a breaking point. When he answers “I would prefer not to,” he is really saying, he has given up and prefers not to live anymore. Bartleby by then is too far gone to help. The lawyer on the other hand, grows more and more compassion towards Bartleby. Bartleby seemed to have helped the lawyer have an awakening by seeing the mistakes he made earlier in life and he becomes a better person. Bartleby starves himself, dies, and then the story ends. Melville kept me reading and wanting more...
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...profound being. Characters like Cincinnatus and Margaret juxtapose those who are ignorant in society. In reality, without these “strangers” there would be no classification of normal humans because there would be nothing to compare them to. The roles the “freaks” and “weirdoes” play in the novels read in the class are very significant; they serve the purpose of conveying important messages to the reader. For example, Ivan from the The Death of Ivan Ilych has a life that has no true purpose, and he realizes this on his deathbed. His life proves that no amount of money, power, or success can equate to happiness and fulfillment. The characters in all of the novels we read in class have taught me something valuable about life. Melville’s Bartleby has taught me how important it is to embrace those who are different because they can offer a new perspective on life. There is more meaning to life than the mundane routines that people tend follow. Maru’s Margaret is a noteworthy character because she is proud of who she is and where she comes from. She does not choose the easy way out by lying about her heritage. Even though most see her as a lowly outsider who is not worthy, she is ultimately more human because she does not condemn or judge others. I am glad that I decided to take this course because it has opened my eyes more to...
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...Collin Cole January 24, 2016 Professor Almanza English 1302 Sec. 382 “Bartleby The Scrivener” Answers 1. In the first few paragraphs of the story the narrator describes himself as an elderly man. He grew up with an easy life and has become accustom to that lifestyle. Being an “elderly man” means he has gone through school and has become a well-educated man, with a job as an “unambitious lawyer”, that makes a good amount of money. With that money comes a certain arrogance about him when he compares himself to Jacob Astor. His language creates a sort of complexity to him that only he wants to understand himself and with the terms like “Imprimis” he could possibly be of Latin or Spanish decent. 2. The narrator introduces Turkey, and Nippers as copyists and a third, Ginger Nut, as an office boy. First described is Turkey. Turkey is a man that begins his day in harmony and finishes his day off in chaos. “In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o clock… it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals”, Melville shows the polar opposites of Turkeys work ethic in the morning with the “florid hue” to the evening “blazing coals”, also comparing him to the sunrise and sunset. Next we have Nippers. Nippers was a man that was also a wreck at certain parts of the day, but luckily for the narrator Nippers and Turkey swapped craziness throughout the day as if it were clockwork. “There fits relieved each other like guards” explains the...
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