| | Bartleby—A Law Student's Analysis
Herman Melville's short story, "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street," contains sufficient depth and detail to support an infinite variety of analysis. This short piece will analyze the text against a central theme of our class. Specifically, I will address the empathy the narrator expresses towards Bartleby and how this conflicts with the narrator's description of himself. | | | My interpretation of the above comment is: I am putting a band-aid on a gaping wound and what I need to do instead is re-grow the missing cells where the wound now sits. I am attempting to re-learn empathy instead of fixing the underlying problem. If this is what the above comment means (actually, regardless of whether this is what it means) I agree. It was hard for me to see this point, because I didn't want to see this point, because it's a deeper and harder problem to fix. Actually, I thought it was a deeper problem to fix. Now that I am very consciously thinking about it, maybe it's not so hard. I will re-focus the problem and change the method. If instead the underlying problem is my belief that social isolation and "more studying" is what I need to do well on the exam then I need to figure out why I think that. In attempting to answer this problem I will first engage in stream of consciousness, and then revist the problem later using Freud's concept of free association. I think isolation/more studying is the answer because it's an easy excuse to be very selfish during this time period and isolating myself feeds a hedonistic, self-centered viewpoint of the world which is very tempting for me to fall into. Additionally it prevents me from hating myself later. In the near future I will be able to look back and console myself that I dedicated all my time to studying and therefore I won't be able to punish myself later. But that's how I approached last semester and I am still punishing myself now. Why am I not learning from my mistake and why is my natural inclination to punish myself and berate myself. Maybe it's not that my natural inclination is to punish myself, but rather, that I feel uncomfortable without structure. It's a lot easier for me to punish myself and berate myself for the past because when looking at something retrospectively I can see the structure of the whole picture. I can see my behavior, and the results it led to. I hate thinking about the present and take a passive approach to the present because I am unsure of the results my present actions are going to cause. So if my problem is feeling unstructured, and having no result, then maybe the solution is to consciously create the future result [of my present behavior] in the present. I need to convince myself of the result that will come of my actions, instead of changing my actions to produce a different result.
-- SkylarPolansky - 26 Mar 2012 | |
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> | Just thought I'd chime in with my two cents. After having read Bartleby, I can see where Eben is coming from in calling it a ghost story. I don’t see Bartleby as a ghost in the conventional sense - such as a spirit of a deceased person - but rather as an external manifestation of one of the pieces of the narrator’s subconscious soul, which has ‘split’ through the course of his struggle with cognitive dissonance in his Wall Street practice. To run with the Harry Potter analogy often evoked in class, Bartleby is to the narrator as a Horcrux is to Voldemort (or for the superstitious of you, He Who Must Not Be Named).
The narrator recognizes that he has taken on the “easiest way of life” and characterizes himself as an “unambitious lawyer [who does] a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title deeds”. He is confined all day in an office, blissfully protected from knowledge of the trials of the outside world by a lack of view. Throughout his “safe” career serving the rich he has forgotten the injustices visited upon the poor. He has suppressed an underlying knowledge that these injustices exist in attempt to remain content and ‘snug’ in his comfortable life.
That is, however, until one day – unbeknownst to him- this persistent cognitive dissonance and detachment from the world below becomes too much to bear and his soul ‘splits’ – giving rise to young Bartleby and his austere 'preferences'. The narrator waffles between shock, confusion, acquiescence, rage, pity, repulsion, and empathy in his reactions to Bartleby’s passive resistance. Staggering in his “own plainest faith”, he seeks guidance from passion and reason (represented by either Turkey or Nippers, depending, of course, on the time of day). The counsel he receives, however, from such “disinterested persons” regarding how to deal with Bartleby’s intrusion on his mental and emotional sensibilities does not prove to be helpful in confronting his ghost. While the narrator has attempted to cognitively train himself to ignore injustice by erecting barriers to impede his view of it– such as a Wall Street office, a ‘viewless room’ and in Bartleby’s case, a screen, it remains ever pervasive and is “always there”. The presence of Bartleby symbolizes the piece of the narrator’s soul that acknowledges this – a piece that can no longer be suppressed and refuses to be ignored or dismissed. While I’m unsure of whether the narrator ever acquires sustained self-realization, he has a momentary break through on page 15 when “for the first time in [his] life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized [him].” The narrator feels the common bond of humanity and realizes that “happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.” The narrator has perpetuated his own vision of a comfortable life by refusing to seek out the misery that hides aloof and looking only to the light.
While he briefly toys with feelings of repulsion, brought on by his perception that pity for Bartleby (and others facing injustice or misery) cannot lead to “effectual succor,” so “common sense bids the soul rid of it”, I do not think the narrator adheres to this view at the end of the piece. But I have trouble discerning whether he has undergone a metamorphosis in the end of it all. While he has certainly been “seriously affected…in a mental way” by Bartleby’s presence in his life, has he been freed from his cognitive dissonance? What will the long-term effect of this disturbance will be? What role will Bartleby’s ghost serve in re-defining the narrator’s future? Does Bartleby merely represent the Ghost of Christmas Past - the people or clients that the narrator could have helped had he chosen to abandon the snugness of his Wall Street office to witness the reality of injustice and misery on the streets? And if so, while it may be too late for the narrator to do justice for Bartleby, is it too late for him to change altogether? Or could Bartleby simultaneously serve as the Ghost of Christmas Future for the admittedly less Scrooge-y narrator, and inspire change in the face of self-realization and human awakening?
-- MeaganBurrows - 27 Mar 2012 |
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