Bartleby The Scrivener Character Analysis
Bartleby is described as completely emotionless. He wrote on silently, palely and mechanically, at first when he wrote. He is also described as a ghost. It should be pointed out that the narrator’s problems with his other employees have to do with their unreliability, sloppiness and flaring tempers. Turkey and Nippers are quite the opposite of Bartleby, yet the main conflict that “Bartleby the Scrivener” presents is an internal problem. The narrator cannot deal with someone who appears to be void of any human attributes. In the descriptions of Turkey and Nippers, there is some sort of organic mechanization in the way they work, and how their temperaments change: “Their fits relieved each other, like guards. When Nipper’s was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa”. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” is the closing sentence in Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”. It is a strong claim about what it means to act according to a certain concept of humanness. The author may be saying that it is human nature to have faults; however losing the ability to emote and connect with one’s surrounding world is
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Once in prison Bartleby refuses to eat, and subsequently starves to death. After Bartleby dies, alone and imprisoned, we finally learn one little tidbit about his past: apparently, he previously worked in the Dead Letter Office (a section of the Post Office that gets rid of undeliverable mail). By just preferring not to live any longer, Bartleby announces his individuality in an ultimately fatal and dramatic ending. If he cannot live as he "prefers" to, he apparently doesn't want to live at all. In the end, we don't know what it was exactly that Bartleby "preferred," and we are left to ponder the mystery of his death.The narrator wonders if this horrifyingly depressing job might have affected Bartleby's sanity – and we, in turn, must wonder what makes all of us who we
Once in prison Bartleby refuses to eat, and subsequently starves to death. After Bartleby dies, alone and imprisoned, we finally learn one little tidbit about his past: apparently, he previously worked in the Dead Letter Office (a section of the Post Office that gets rid of undeliverable mail). By just preferring not to live any longer, Bartleby announces his individuality in an ultimately fatal and dramatic ending. If he cannot live as he "prefers" to, he apparently doesn't want to live at all. In the end, we don't know what it was exactly that Bartleby "preferred," and we are left to ponder the mystery of his death.The narrator wonders if this horrifyingly depressing job might have affected Bartleby's sanity – and we, in turn, must wonder what makes all of us who we