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All the knowledge and wisdom he thinks he has gathered in years of practicing an easy, uncomplicated way of acting are of no use to him now. The old order of thongs and his firm beliefs are of no use when he is dealing with the case of Bartleby. Sometimes, the reader could suspect the narrator is actually looking at the scrivener and see his other self. There is a certain degree disobedience in the lawyer, too. After having discovered one Sunday that Bartleby practically lived in the chambers at No_ on Wall Street, the lawyer is still unable to dismiss him from his job and from his life: "I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breath one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind" (Melville, 2343). He is totally attracted by the strange character he is unable to communicate with. His determination to get through to him and then fell good about having done a good deed is weaker the more he discovers there is no solution to the problem and no easy or even complicated way out....
There is no resonance, no echo, nothing he can hang on from Bartleby's part. He continues to be a black wall that does nothing away. Although, at some point, the lawyer will give up on Bartleby, he will have to come back to him once the new tenants of the chalbers at No._ on Wall Street will ask for his assistance in the case of the unwanted character who permanently inhabited the space. In this case, he is indicated as the person "responsible" for the poor strange creature who answers to any attempt to communicate with: "I prefer not to."
The end is to a certain degree revelatory since it provides an information regarding Bartleby's previous working place as "a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter office at Washington"(3355). The uselessness of the letters and the uselessness of the man who is hired to service useless purposes could be accounting for the roots of alienation. The turf that grows imprisoned is sign of hope, though.
The story is about a relationship, not just the fact Bartleby does not 'care' to work. Thompson, Graham. "Dead letters!....Dead men?': The rhetoric of the office in Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'. " Journal of American Studies 3-34.(2000): 395-411. Thompson analyzes the relationship between Bartleby and the unnamed narrator as a kind of a romance. Why is the narrator compelled to tell the story of Bartleby, long after it happened? Telling
" Bartleby's physical appearance -- his pale visage, his lean form, his tattered clothing and his "flute-like" voice -- conveys a man who is like the living dead. Indeed, the narrator discovers that Bartleby has been sleeping in the office. Bartleby is like a man who is haunting the building. He only speaks when he is summoned; he has no discernible emotional reactions, and he floats around the office as if
Bartleby and Akaky: A Struggle against Social Tide Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street is a story reminiscent of the emergence of nineteenth century white-collar working class in most cities in the United States and specifically New York. Melville paints a picture of "Bartleby" a tragi-comic fable about a passive man, invisible to the society and who responds to his condition in the most unusual way leading to
Melville Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" describes the drudgery of daily life in an office. The reader learns about the title scrivener from a well-meaning, good-natured lawyer who hires Bartleby to help in the office alongside his relatively ineffective scribes Nippers and Turkey. At first, Bartleby seems a good fit in spite of his dour demeanor. As time passes, Bartleby loses all motivation to work. He starts to refuse
Not having a will, becomes thus the only possibility to attain freedom and this thesis present in Schopenhauer's thinking seems to have protruded into Melville's convictions when he wrote the short tale. Norberg, Peter. "On Teaching Bartleby." Leviathan. Vol. 2. Issue 2(p. 87-99) Norbert presents the line of events that led to him choosing a particular method of teaching Bartleby the Scrivener to his students. The revelation of the importance of
After all, he was performing his main tack quite well and in a continuous manner. The second time to refuses to perform a task his boss gives him happens to be in front of all the other employees. This new situation commands immediate reaction from his part, because his very authority is questioned. By not taking action, he could open a chain of reaction and insubordination from the rest