"Bartleby, the Scrivener"

Book Review # 100164

English > Analysis
Literature > American

An analysis of the story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville.

974 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Herman Melville's story "Bartleby, the Scrivener", is an unusual story without a clear meaning. The paper relates that critics have tried to interpret the story in several ways, one of which would hold that the conflict with Bartleby causes his employer to undergo a spiritual change. The paper then shows that, on the contrary, an examination of the story suggests that the employer is left more puzzled than changed and that he may see something spiritual in Bartleby but not so that he himself changes.

From the Paper:

"The lawyer is a man who likes things to work smoothly and who at the same time tries to greet every even with equanimity, not wanting to let things bother him. He seems to have a nice position, but in truth he has followed the usual route in life--he has compromised with his dreams. He has come to accept what he is and tries not to miss too much the heights he may have dreamed of achieving when he started. Bartleby may also be a man with failed dreams, though if he has dreams we never learn what they are. He has apparently not accepted his lot in life, however, for he seems instead to have been imprisoned by some failure so that now he merely withdraws within himself. "

Sample of Sources Used:

Davis, Clark. After the Whale: Melville in the Wake of Moby-Dick. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1995.
Davis, Todd F. "The Narrator's Dilemma in 'Bartleby the Scrivener': The Excellently Illustrated Re-statement of a Problem." Studies in Short Fiction, Volume 34, Issue 2 (1997), 183.
Lazzari, Marie. "Bartleby, the Scrivener." In Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism Vol. 49, Marie Lazzari (ed.), 375-376. New York: Gale, 1995.
Melville, Herman. "Bartleby the Scrivener." Shorter Novels of Herman Melville by Herman Melville, 107-156. New York: Liveright, 1956.
Mollinger, Richard N. Psychoanalysis and Literature: An Introduction. New York: Nelson-Hall, 1981.