batleby the scrivener Essay -- essays research papers

"Bartleby the Scrivener" is a complex story, so I am going to zero in on unmatched particularly interest and intelligent aspect of it. Due to the power of the message even this one particular aspect will be complex, of course. The first thing to agate line is that the story has a first-person narrator. The narrator, an anonymous lawyer, is in fact a study character in his own right. Ostensibly the story is about Bartleby and his actions as a scrivener. However, what the story is really about, in a sense, is the effect Bartleby seems to progress to on the narrator. We learn a great deal about the narrator, however to a greater extent importantly, we see him undergo several rather significant changes. These changes strike to light Melvilles comment on the oppression and lack of pardon in the emerging capitalist economy The narrators initial self-characterization is important to the story. He is a "safe" man, one who takes few risks and tries above all to adjust to societies norms (Melville 1109). The most pragmatic concerns of financial security and ease of life be his priorities. He has made himself perfectly at home in the advanced(a) economy he works as a lawyer transaction with rich mens legal documents. He is therefore a musical accompaniment 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 in the midst of them will be explored later. Nippers and Turkey are doubles of each other. Nippers is visionary in the morning and productive in the afternoon, while Turkey is drunkard in the afternoon and productive in the morning. Nippers ambition mirrors Turkeys resignation to his propose and his sad, uneventful career, the difference coming about beca role of their respective ages. Nippers cherishes ambitions of being more than a mere scrivener, while the elderly Turkey must state with the narra tor to consider his age when evaluating his productivity. Their offenses are also parallel, in harm of being appropriate vices for each mans respective age. Alcoholism is a vice that develops with time. Ambition arguably is most volatile in a mans youth. These characters exit valuable comic relief in what is otherwise a olive-drab and upsetting tale. Melvilles purpose in making Bartlebys temperament act complimentary to the narrators is to demonstrate the chang... ...ience with Bartleby. It is doubtful that the lawyer at the beginning of the story, as he pictured himself, could commence imagined much(prenominal) personal tragedies. Here we see the denouement. The culmination of the change that Bartleby has affected 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 disti nguish that Melville was trying to display in support of his view of the negative aspects of the affair world. This world and the humanity in it had affected both characters. Bartleby of course was the employee whose unbroken bombardment with the uncompassionate and pitiless world of Capitalism caused him to lose swear to think for himself and as a response 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 everywhere the course of the story brings these traits and the institutions that founded them into glaring clarity.