#SCRIVENER NEW WORLD FULL#

In reference to the narrator, setting is also important. This allows the reader a better understanding of Bartleby as an outsider.

#SCRIVENER NEW WORLD FULL#

The setting of Wall Street full of its hustle and bustle creates a sharp disparity with the nature of Bartleby’s character.

Bartleby is an enigma to the narrator and in the same regard the narrator may be seen as an enigma to Bartleby. Whilst Bartleby is quite content to do nothing, the narrator is quite discontent doing anything other than work.

The use of this motif serves to reinforce the antithetical nature of the relationship between Bartleby and the narrator. The narrator is driven to near madness by Bartleby’s quaint reply to his questioning. The author uses the motif of Bartleby’s solemn refusal, “I would prefer not to,” to emphasize Bartleby’s unwillingness to adapt. Melville is in essence showing that in a matter of fact he is correct in his skepticism as he has created a character that baffles the reader. The narrator is fruitless in his endeavors to break through to Bartleby because of Melville’s own aforementioned skepticism. Bartleby’s wants and need are not privy to the narrator which may help to explain the narrator’s obsession with Bartleby. Bartleby, like a wall, is immovable in the literal sense at points, and indeed in the mental sense throughout the story. They both represent the “inscrutable” as Elliot describes it. As he explains, the characters Bartleby and Moby Dick “ Melville’s own skepticism about the inability of human beings to fully comprehend and control the forces in the universe.” The wall that is Moby Dick and the wall that is Bartleby are very much the same thing. Author Mark Elliott explains that Ahab’s interpretation of Moby Dick as a “wall” is important because “Bartleby himself is also a kind of wall”. Some writers have argued that Bartleby is much like Melville’s famous character, Moby Dick. The differences between Bartleby and the narrator mimic this disparity. People would either cling to old ways or would adapt and become part of the new world. People in this period of time would have belonged to one of two worlds. Though the narrator fits in well of the world of Wall Street he would be hard pressed to adapt to a life anywhere else. In some sense the narrator is the antithesis of Bartleby.

Bartleby is a lost soul who seems to be completely out of place in the world of Wall Street. Born to a world without industrialism and thrust into a revolution of industry, the members of this generation were forced to adapt. Melville uses elements of character, plot, and setting to illustrate both Bartleby and the narrator’s unwillingness and ultimate failure to adapt.Īllegorically the character Bartleby might symbolize any individual born in this time of transition for America. Melville makes light of this change and its effect on society with the characters of Bartleby and the narrator. It was a time when public attitudes towards work were changing, brought about by the transition to industrialization. Herman Melville wrote Bartleby the Scrivener in the year 1853.

Scrivener new world