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The time that is spent living is spent completing meaningless tasks. This is what the narrator realizes at the novel's end, when he says "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" The final message is that society as a whole needs to find real meaning, and not continue to exist based on illusions of what is important.
In Billy Bud, illusion is used in a different way. Billy Bud is the main character who lives based on illusion because of his naivety. This naivety means that he is not able to see situations as they really are. For this reason, the evil Claggart is able to constantly manipulate him. This leads to Billy's downfall, and ultimately, his death. Much...
Instead, you have to see the reality in situations. The major difference is that in Bartleby, Melville is referring to seeing the reality of society, while in Billy Bud, he is referring to seeing the reality of other people.
It has now been seen that both Bartleby and Billy Bud deal with the theme of illusion. They both show the tragic consequences that occur when people live based on accepting illusion, and fail to see reality. The final message is not to live in denial, but to open your eyes and see the truth of society as a whole and the individuals in society.
In fact, when in the midst of trying to sort out what was going on aboard the San Dominick, he briefly thinks that Cereno might be teaming up with the blacks, but this was impossible, since "who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with Negroes?" Throughout the story, Melville relates how Delano eases his
Man of the Crowd By Edgar Allan Poe (1840) The story significantly depicts not only the preoccupation of the 17th hundred London issues and a trend brought by the progressive industrialization of time, but speaks so much relevance in our modern time as well. The epigraph which sums up the very essence of the story explains the dynamic of a human being too busy to mingle with the crowd for fear of
The narrator becomes repulsed by Bartleby and decides that he must be suffering from some type of mental problem. The less the narrator knows about Bartleby the worse things seem to be for him. He wants to make sense of things. He wants it all to make sense. The conflict arises from his inability to do so. The narrator is simply being human in his desire to control and