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Bartleby The Scrivener Response Essay

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In nearly all situations of life, we find ourselves faced with the familiar face of a blank wall: Ominous, judging, begrudging walls. Some tend to be symbolic; others tend to be quite literal, both cases leaving us puzzled at how to get around such an obstruction. In Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” the title character faces quite a similar dilemma. All throughout the story, Bartleby faces an assortment of walls, most notably a blackened brick wall right outside his office window. This wall becomes a preoccupation for him, leaving him in what one can only call “a dead-wall reverie” (Melville 17). By the end of the story the walls go from an enclosure to, quite literally, a tomb for the distraught writer. Over the years, …show more content…

As stated by Marx in his critical analysis of Melville’s story, “When [Bartleby] ceases to write, he begins to die” (Marx 17). When applied, this idea sets an entirely different tone for the story. Communication slowly fades from Bartleby’s life, until he will not speak to anyone. It is a steady process, beginning with his denial of reading over papers to proof-read them: “These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you… It is common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so” (Melville 8)? Later, he begins to refuse to write any longer: “…I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall reverie. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing” (Melville 17). Finally, he stops speaking, ceasing all communication with the world and the people around him: “ ‘I know you,’ he said, without looking around, – “and I want nothing to say to you”… He replied, but would say nothing more” (Melville 27). The entirety of the story revolves around the lawyer’s inability to reason with Bartleby and just gives up whenever he cannot get the forlorn scrivener to open up to him. Without a way to communicate him feelings and his problems, Bartleby cannot save himself. Conversely, there is also no need for Bartleby to attempt to communicate without a willing audience to listen to what he has to say. After his years spent in the Dead Letter …show more content…

They are a common theme in “Bartleby”, from the walls themselves being given a grim description – “This view might have been considered rather tame, than otherwise, deficient in what the landscape painters call ‘life’ ” (Melville 2). – To Bartleby’s own implicit demise. Whether it be a result of being pushed away from human contact, rejecting the concept of socialization, or an inability to relay what must be said to others, Bartleby’s situation lead to his descent into hopelessness and death. Such points are addressed in Steven Ryan’s interpretation, in which he states: “…one could easily understand the…logic that would see within Bartleby’s dead-wall reverie as…a recognition of the cosmic void (death, isolation…limitations)” (Ryan 42). For hours upon hours, Bartleby stands and stares aimlessly at the wall outside his window and at the walls of the prison. He refuses to work, as he also refuses to work. In the end, we – alongside Bartleby – realize there is no true escape for him except prison or his own inevitable death. By rejecting all basic necessities of life, Bartleby seems to come to his own acceptance of the latter, but is prepared to face the former with the same motives; and that he does. The office walls and prison walls are essentially the same to him, as he knows that both will do the same thing to keep him contained. In the same manner, the walls of approaching

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