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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 the story becomes a way of 'having' Bartleby and possessing him, the way the narrator cannot in life.
Weinstock., Jeffrey Andrew. "Doing justice to Bartleby." American Transcendental Quarterly
17.1 (2003): 23-42, 55. Weinstock analyzes Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" as a kind of postmodern mystery story. Bartleby's reasons are always enigmatic, and the frame tale, that of a 'dead letter' office with an anonymous narrator, intensifies this sense of meaninglessness of life. "The conclusion (or lack thereof) of 'Bartleby' points to the unsettling realization that every letter is potentially a 'dead letter'-that, as famously proposed by Jacques Derrida, a letter can always not arrive at its destination....
Meaning can always go astray. If this is an inherent possibility of language, then "Bartleby" finally raises the question of what it means for meaning to arrive-of what it in fact means for something to mean at all." Bartleby is frightening to the narrator because he highlights the meaninglessness of work, something the narrator believes in.
Zlogar, Richard J. "Body Politics in 'Bartleby': Leprosy, Healing, and Christ-ness in Melville's 'Story of Wall- Street.' Nineteenth-Century Literature. 53. 4 (Mar., 1999): 505-529. The author examines various types of interpretation of the figure of Bartleby in literary criticism: as an artist, a resistor to the capitalist system, a madman, and also as a kind of Christ-figure. The author gives an overview of these various interpretations, with specific attention to Bartleby as a Christ figure. Examines Bartleby as a kind of social leper because of his refusal to work and the physical descriptions of Bartleby by the narrator, such as "cadaverous" and cosigned to "The Tombs" that reinforce religious ideology and the narrator's…
Weinstock., Jeffrey Andrew. "Doing justice to Bartleby." American Transcendental Quarterly
17.1 (2003): 23-42, 55. Weinstock analyzes Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" as a kind of postmodern mystery story. Bartleby's reasons are always enigmatic, and the frame tale, that of a 'dead letter' office with an anonymous narrator, intensifies this sense of meaninglessness of life. "The conclusion (or lack thereof) of 'Bartleby' points to the unsettling realization that every letter is potentially a 'dead letter'-that, as famously proposed by Jacques Derrida, a letter can always not arrive at its destination. Meaning can always go astray. If this is an inherent possibility of language, then "Bartleby" finally raises the question of what it means for meaning to arrive-of what it in fact means for something to mean at all." Bartleby is frightening to the narrator because he highlights the meaninglessness of work, something the narrator believes in.
Zlogar, Richard J. "Body Politics in 'Bartleby': Leprosy, Healing, and Christ-ness in Melville's 'Story of Wall- Street.' Nineteenth-Century Literature. 53. 4 (Mar., 1999): 505-529. The author examines various types of interpretation of the figure of Bartleby in literary criticism: as an artist, a resistor to the capitalist system, a madman, and also as a kind of Christ-figure. The author gives an overview of these various interpretations, with specific attention to Bartleby as a Christ figure. Examines Bartleby as a kind of social leper because of his refusal to work and the physical descriptions of Bartleby by the narrator, such as "cadaverous" and cosigned to "The Tombs" that reinforce religious ideology and the narrator's subconscious guilt.
The narrator becomes restless in finding a solution to this new and unexpected problem that he encounters. 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
Abstract Engaging in a Bartleby, the Scrivener analysis essay is bound to test one’s patience. It is one of the most inscrutable works of Herman Melville. While Melville is perhaps most famous for his nautical adventure tales, this paper delves into the enigmatic cogs and wheels that make this short story a piece of eternal literature. Eternal literature transcends the constraints of time and relatability, touching upon themes and symbols that
Conformity and Rebellion in Works by Amy Tan, Martin Luther King Jr., Herman Melville, and Shirley Jackson The dilemma of conformity vs. rebellion, to do something that is expected, or "has always been done," or to rebel against expectation or convention, is common in both life and literature. Three short stories, by Amy Tan; Herman Melville, and Shirley Jackson, and the essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.,