- Is Bartleby merely a lazy person who decides he no longer wants to work? And in this way does the story show what happens to people who isolate themselves from the world? (a variation on the theme present in "The Fall of the House of Usher").
- Is Bartleby a kind of victim? Is he someone who, through years of dehumanizing and monotonous work, has been turned into a human machine, and the story shows what happens when such a machine malfunctions?
- Is Bartleby a kind of failed industrial, modernized romantic hero? In this sense, his romantic self has been so battered and oppressed by years and years of dehumanizing labor that the only thing left is a tiny, mouse-like "I'd prefer not to." At some point he is described as being "like the last column of some ruined temple." Maybe Bartleby's "I'd prefer not to" functions as the last death rattle of romantic expression, Whitman's "Yawp" reduced to a faint cry of self-assertion just before the grave. Yeah? Maybe???
All food for thought. You might have an entirely different idea. The main question I want you to get at is... What's wrong with Bartleby?
Hi Period 4. It kind of rules to have two days to do an assignment when my others classes only have one. I suppose you pay for it between Wednesday and Thursday, but it seems like it's better to have some slack early in the week. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteWhee! I'm first!
ReplyDelete...So. Bartleby. As far as characters go, he's pretty vague. He limits his conversations - if they can be called that - to variations of "I'd prefer not to", has no life beyond the office - but does practically nothing there - and will allow no one into his personal life, past or present. Why is he like this? Yet with all the options that Mr Harrington laid out above, I don't believe that Bartleby was particularly lazy, a victim, or a romanticized hero attempting to cling to the remnants of a past life style. I think that he was mainly a regular guy - though most likely with a past - with a solid belief in what he must do, and what he would prefer to do. With this dogma, he therefore felt no need to explain why he preferred to act or not act as he did, especially when needled. All in all, I'm trying to say that Bartleby was an ordinary person, with an excessive need for privacy. (Hope this works...)
O Bartleby! Throughout the story I pictured Bartleby as a little rebellious boy that just loves making people’s lives miserable. Personally, I would become too impatient and punish him the Dominican way with a cheese grater, a 25lb rock, and a belt…don’t ask. Clearly Barty is a complicated person that went through something in his life to make him a confined, timid, and strange human being. At first, he seemed like a stubborn man that wanted to irritate anybody that interacted with him by passive resistance. Just as the narrator did, as the story continued one starts truly thinking about what happened to him and why is he such an odd being. In a sense, I felt bad for him believing that in the past he was probably taken advantage of, not sexually for all those little pervs out there. It seems as though he was a victim of some sort, either a servant that was locked up and isolated from society or even doing a job he absolutely hated with cruel people. There were many time when Bartleby could have left the office, instead he stayed there and was somewhat loyal to his boss, the narrator. Every human wants and needs attention. Mabye Bartleby starved to death because he though it was the only way out of this dreadful and controlling life, just like that dude did in Dead Poet’s Society. In both cases there were countless options that both could have chosen. For example, the narrator truly liked Barty and wanted to get pass his barrier. He kept giving him chances, which Barty refused. This is the part that throws me off. If Barty would have eventually opened up, he could have changed his life and do what he did prefer!
ReplyDeleteI agree sort of with what jose is saying. In the beginning of the story, the narrator talks about the three other different workers and then he talks about Bartleby. I think it is important how he takes the time to talk about the other workers because it has a certain relevance to the story. All three of the workers, Nippers, Gingernut, and Turkey, are all different in their own ways. Then there is Bartleby, who seems absolutely normal when he first begins to work at Wall Street. He is hard working and stays longer hours to complete the work given to him. But then the other side of him is shown, and the entire story takes a turn. The Lawyer asks him to review a very important document and instead he says "i'd prefer not to." After we see Bartleby begin to say this over and over again and never do work, it becomes clear that something isn’t quite right. I wouldn’t say that there is something wrong with Bartleby but maybe what is wrong with everyone else around him? None of the characters except the lawyer show emotion or what it is like to truly feel like a human being. I believe that Bartleby is speaking out for himself by saying "id prefer not to." Although Bartleby cannot express his emotions or say exactly what is it is that he is feeling, by him saying no to the lawyer, he is indeed speaking out. Bartleby is expressing change and that even if things get disorganized and out of order, to never fully give up. The lawyer has every opportunity to fire him but he does not...and Bartleby has every opportunity to quit but he does not either. He simply is just expressing his exhaustion of working, which to me is tied to the authors main point; that if we simply only work and put all our effort into it, that it will soon take over our self completely and we will no longer have a choice but to remain in the unhappy, lonely position and attempt to fight the tiring struggle.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Bartleby, or "Barty," was NOT lazy. Melville made this apparent with his period of extremely hard work. He was the first and last one at work. He literally lived at the office. When he expressed himself with his harmless "I would prefer not to"s, he was eventually seen as harmful, and a threat to the value of his building. He was only seeking his hermitage. He represented the plight of the sanguine romantics.
ReplyDeleteRomanticism was outdated in the industrial, capitalist times. Work in the industrial cities transformed workers into robots, trapped in the system. Self-expression only gave an employer the excuse to fire his employee. Even so, self-expression always requires bravery and will be challenged (the expulsion of Nwanda in DPS). Expression of self in the wrong environment is extremely difficult. Bartleby was the “failed industrial, modernized romantic hero.” Was he successful? That is up to you to decide.
After reading so many romantic and transcendentalist stories, I automatically assumed that Bartleby must be a symbol for something, like the Lawyer’s mind or conscience. However, since Melville is a realist I know that is not the case. So if Bartleby is supposed to be real, what the heck is wrong with him?! All three of Mr. Harrington’s ideas are valid. Maybe it is a combination of the three. Obviously he is lazy, but there has to be a reason for his laziness. Maybe he is tortured and had an awful childhood or a scarring experience that made him bitter and resenting. Bartleby definitely represents a failed romantic hero, but that is not the reason for his passive, lazy behavior. I don’t know why Bartleby is the way he is, and obviously neither does anyone else, but he obviously has some problems. It seems unlikely that even monotonous, repetitive labor would cause a person to be so indifferent and withdrawn from the world. He had no relationships with anyone, as far as we know, and had no contact with the outside world at all. And as the story progresses, his condition seems to worsen. Maybe he was just a really, really unhappy person with no reason to live. Poor guy.
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ReplyDeleteParker isn't some creeper creepin' on our blog; I was accidentally logged into my club's "Parker Youth In Action" email...my bad...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree less with Jose and more with Zack. I don't think Bartleby was lazy for the same reasons. He worked hard, he worked long hours, and he ate slept and drank his work; I don't think a lazy person could do that. Bartleby's response stands out because it didn't really fit into the working structure at the time. The first two scrivener's both had unique working disabilities (one can't work in mornings and one can't work at night), but they unhappily did as they were told and attempted their work anyways. Bartleby, on the other hand, realized his disability, and refused to work when he is just as "unable" (for whatever his reason) as the other characters.
Instead of making himself miserable and succumbing to an unpleasant tradition of the workplace, Bartleby functions in his own unique, and even more efficient way. But even if his habits may be more efficient, they are still unpopular in society. Because of this, I think the "Bartleby the Scrivener" is a demonstration of the death and unacceptability of romanticism and unique fulfillment, and the establishment of rigid rules of society. And the more Bartleby realized this pressure from the realist world, the more he passively resisted. In the end, I think Bartleby ended up dying because, as Bartleby's previous history suggests, his romantic ways could no longer survive in a realist world.
I literally just spent one hour writing on this blog and I accidentally refreshed the page. I am crying. Anyways… I would like to start off by saying that Bartleby reminded me of Stanley from The Office. No matter what the boss says to him, he always brings in his personal interests and avoids commands by using phrases such as “I would prefer not to.”
ReplyDeleteIn the story, Herman Melville gives Bartleby many mysterious characteristics and allows the reader to ask who was Bartleby and why did he act in such a way. I am not sure if I completely understood Ashly’s comment about the co-workers being emotionless, but I would have to disagree. The other scriveners in the office show disapproval of Barty’s actions. Especially Nipper’s, who tries to start a fight with Barty after he hears one of his sassy remarks. But to answer the bigger question, I would have to agree with Zack that Barty was not lazy. In the beginning of the novel, the lawyer is very impressed with Barty’s work ethic. He stays working late and does not even take lunch breaks, making him more efficient than the others. I also believe that he knew something that neither the lawyer, the other workers, nor the audience knows. Barty was able to manipulate people’s emotions, primarily the lawyers. In the story, the lawyer was split between two sentiments: One side of him said that Bartleby should be fired because he is no longer good for the business and the other side tells him that he must care for the poor, innocent man who has nowhere else to go. These separate emotions battle in lawyer’s head and drive him crazy as the novel progresses. He even moves and changes offices because he is so afraid and emotionally confused.
In conclusion, I think that Melville creates an inexplicable character so that the reader can decide who he is. I, like Daphne, believe that Barty was not mentally ill, but instead had some kind of genius about him that allowed him to drive people like his boss crazy.
In all honesty, I support Bartleby's defiance. To me it seemed as though he was worked too hard. He even went so far as to make a permanent residence in his office. He seemed to be doing more work than the others and was diligent and thorough. I think therefore that he was merely trying to stand up for himself, to defend the countless hours of effort he put in, and to protect himself from being abused in the workplace by constantly beiing given piles of work. He had to stand up for himself and say enough was enough, and "I would prefer not to" was the most polite way he could think of to do so. Maybe he wanted to scream at his boss that he was tired of being overly depended on, and assigned task after task, and that his boss was taking him for granted, but "i would prefer not to" was a better way of expressing all that than simply getting mad and shouting his feelings at his boss. In this way, there is nothing wrong with Bartleby; instead, there is something wrong with the treatment he recieves from his coworkers who work him like crazy and disrupt his shy existence.
ReplyDeleteit's eleven o'clock and only eight or nine of us have commented... this is worrying... where is everybody?
ReplyDeleteI'm here emily! I was watching the VS fashion show so i got a little sidetracked... anyways:
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of the things that people before me have said, such that Bartleby was not lazy because Melville took the time to describe Bartleby’s laborious work ethic before he decided that he would “prefer not to” do the work. However, when I was reading the story, I did not think that Bartleby was a regular guy at all. I got a very strong vibe that something either happened to him in his past or he was not all mentally there. Melville was very good at describing every scene and person in immaculate detail, but omitted much description of Barlteby’s past. I think that Melville did this because he wanted to give Bartleby that added element of mystery. Not knowing much about his past, I think that Melville may have wanted the reader to believe that some event really affected Bartleby, most likely when he was young. This may be a little bit of a stretch, but my dad was recently talking about my dog and that the reason she is so strange and social awkward now is because of the bad experiences she had as a puppy and her lack of communication with other animals and people in her early days. So, maybe this same sort of scenario happened to Bartleby. I’m not sure what type of experience would have caused him to become so strange and soft spoken but it would obviously have to be a very negative and harmful one. My other theory is that maybe Bartleby had some sort of mental disability. The reason I say this is because I thought it was so strange that he was just living in the office. I just got the vibe that he was living in his own little world and not really paying attention to society or his life. I don’t think he was very old but it seemed as if his mind had simply just aged, so perhaps he was just a victim or overworked machine. Bartleby seemed as if he was only capable of focusing all his energy on one task, and would only be able to focus on that. At the end of the story he just generally seemed out of it and like he didn’t really care about anything. Overall, I think it makes the most sense that Bartleby suffered from some sort of mental disability.
After reading the story, I kind of felt unfulfilled, and the fact that we never learned the reason for Bartleby's strange behavior caused me to think of him not as a hero, a lazy person, and not even as a victim that would fit into the category that our lovely teacher gave us above. So, naturally, I created one of my own. I thought,"What's something that causes people to lose motivation, become cut off from society, and lose the will to live?" The answer came to me after watching some Mythbusters and seeing a commercial for Cymbalta. Bartleby suffers from clinical depression. If you think about it, it makes shocking amounts of sense. I figured that after losing his previous job, he started showing the first signs, which caused him to alienate those in his personal life, including his family, and possibly his wife. As his depression continued to snowball due to the added factors of losing those close to him, he found himself kicked out of his home by vengeful family members angry over the way he alienated them, which explains why he began sleeping at the office. His depression finally became so great, thanks to the loss of everything he knew before being fired from the Dead Letters Office, that he lost the will to live.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Bartleby the Scrivener, I would have to agree with Gonzo and Zach and say that Bartleby was definitely not lazy. Someone who normally produces optimal work and normally does everything they are asked to do, but for some reason begins to stop, does not describe a lazy person. If anything similar to lazy, you can call it inconsistent, but even then thats not the case with Bartleby. I definitely agree with Mr. Harrington's idea, in that i feel like the monotonous work of burning "dead letters" and copying this and that everyday for long hours is what causes Bartleby's downfall. (If it were me you would not catch me near letters for dead people any day and if you did, i would probably be lying on them dead too, especially if i had to be around them and do the monotonous work that Bartleby had to do. Im just saying.) In doing these tasks day in and day out causes Bartleby's mind to deteriorate and turn him to a robot. I would say that this reminds me slightly of the case of Doctor Manette in Tale of Two Cities, in which Doctor Manette's mind deteriorates due to the 18 years he had to spend in prison except that . However in Doctor Manettes case, he was forced to be in the situation he was in and i guess he actually had some hope that things would change. Due to the encouragement he receives from his wife's hair strand and his needle and thread to keep him somewhat sane, he maintains the will to live. Bartleby on the other hand was not forced into his situation but somehow still fell into what i think was a state of depression and exhaustion like David was saying. When saying "would prefer not to" i don't think he wasn't trying to be a hero at all; he just, in my opinion lost the will to work for some unknown reason. Then like how Manette had his shoemaking kit to pretty keep him from dying from depression, Bartleby used the lawyer and the office that the lawyer worked in almost as his own version of the shoemaking kit and once the lawyer moved away from that office (leaving Bartleby without a job and to go to prison) it caused Bartleby to also lose his will to live.
ReplyDeleteThats all folks (wise words from The Educated Brother)