batleby the scrivener Essay -- essays research papers

"Bartleby the Scrivener" is a mixed story, so I am going to zero in on one particularly interesting and intelligent aspect of it. Due to the force play of the message even this one particular aspect will be complex, of course. The first thing to note is that the story has a first-person narrator. The narrator, an anonymous lawyer, is in fact a major character in his own right. obviously the story is some Bartleby and his actions as a scrivener. However, what the story is really about, in a sense, is the effect Bartleby tallyms to have on the narrator. We learn a wide deal about the narrator, but more importantly, we see him undergo several(prenominal) rather significant changes. These changes bring to light Melvilles comment on the oppression and lack of compassion in the emerging capitalist delivery The narrators initial self-characterization is important to the story. He is a "safe" man, one who takes a couple of(prenominal) risks and tries above all to con form to societies norms (Melville 1109). The most pragmatic concerns of financial security system and ease of life be his priorities. He has made himself perfectly at home in the modern economy he works as a lawyer dealing with rich mens legal documents. He is therefore a complement or a double to Bartleby in many ways.     Doubling is a recurring theme in "Bartleby the Scrivener." Bartleby is a phantom double of our narrator, and the parallels between them will be explored later. Nippers and Turkey are doubles of each other. Nippers is useless in the morning and productive in the afternoon, while Turkey is drunk in the afternoon and productive in the morning. Nippers ambition mirrors Turkeys resignation to his place and his sad, uneventful career, the difference coming about because of their single ages. Nippers cherishes ambitions of being more than a mere scrivener, while the senile Turkey must plead with the narrator to consider his age when eval uating his productivity. Their vices are also parallel, in terms of being appropriate vices for each mans respective age. Alcoholism is a vice that develops with time. Ambition arguably is most vapourisable in a mans youth. These characters provide valuable comic relief in what is otherwise a somber and upsetting tale. Melvilles purpose in making Bartlebys personality act complimentary to the narrators is to demonstrate the chang... ...ience with Bartleby. It is doubtful that the lawyer at the initiation of the story, as he pictured himself, could have imagined such personal tragedies. Here we see the denouement. The sexual climax of the change that Bartleby has bear on in the lawyer.      Ah Bartleby Ah humanity (1134)     This final sentence shows a depth of emotion that would have been impossible for the narrator at the beginning of the story. This obvious change gives readers the evidence that Melville was trying to display in sancti on of his view of the negative aspects of the business instauration. This world and the humanity in it had affected both characters. Bartleby of course was the employee whose constant bombardment with the uncompassionate and pitiless world of Capitalism caused him to stick out desire to think for himself and as a receipt to do nothing. The narrator was the employer whose use of the repetitive and routine tasks of his profession caused him to lose compassion and responsibility. The change in the narrator that one can see take place over the course of the story brings these traits and the institutions that founded them into glaring clarity.