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We learn in the first paragraphs of “Bartleby the Scrivener” that the characters we are dealing with are a lawyer and his law clerks. Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #4: A Critique of Capitalism in “Bartleby the Scrivener” Read “Bartleby the Scrivener” again with more skepticism about the narrator, and more of his faults will be illuminated. For instance, he does not seem to care about why his two employees become angry or belligerent while working, but rather content that they do not rebel at the same time. Even though he speaks of his compassion to his clerks Turkey and Nippers, there is a way in which he might be completely out of touch with their actual needs and real feelings. He claims to be mild mannered but is furious about the abolition of his former job because he counted on doing little or no work, and making enormous profits. His “prudence” and “method” might easily translate into words like greedy or miserly.
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Instead of taking him right away as a wise old man who is giving us the story straight, look for contradictions in his narration. The first clue he gives us comes in the first sentence “I am a rather elderly man”. An argument might be made that this narrator in “Bartleby the Scrivener” is shading or padding some things, either about himself or other characters, or that he’s gotten some crucial things wrong. Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #3: Is the Narrator Reliable in “Bartleby the Scrivener”?Īnalyze the structure of the narration in “Bartleby the Scrivener”, and the narrator’s use of language in talking about himself. Now compare this job of Bartleby’s with his former one: a clerk in the “Dead Letter Office at Washington”, and make a claim about what statement is being made having to do with the significance of words, and the humanity words and communication represent, or are supposed to represent. Legal contracts are drawn up and copied, “mortgages, and title-deeds”, these all having importance because they represent money being transferred based on laws of society. The lawyer and his clerks’ work thrives on words, although not in the literary fashion (the narrator makes a quip about how Byron would be bored with their words), but words nevertheless. Mere words for the narrator of “Bartleby the Scrivener” have weight, significance, and they evoke the idea of money. He says that it is a name “… which, I admit, I love to repeat for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion”. Look at the narrator’s vivid description of the name of his former employer John Jacob Astor at the beginning of “Bartleby the Scrivener”. Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #2: “Dead Letters” and Heavy Words in “Bartleby the Scrivener”
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By the closing sentence of “Bartleby the Scrivener”, 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 perhaps the greatest tragedy an individual could go through or witness. When Nipper’s was on, Turkey’s was off and vice versa”. So Turkey and Nippers are quite the opposite of Bartleby, yet the main conflict that “Bartleby the Scrivener” presents is an internal one: that is, how is the narrator to deal with someone who appears to be void of any human attributes? Note also 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. It should be pointed out that the narrator’s problems with his other employees have to do with their unreliability, sloppiness, drunkenness, and flaring tempers. Bartleby is described as completely emotionless, at one point “… he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically”.
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The last line of Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” is “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” Analyze this exclamation: it maybe that Melville is making a strong claim about what it means to act according to a certain concept of humanness, that being the characters other than Bartleby (Turkey, Nippers, Ginger Nut, and the narrator himself). Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #1: “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a Human Tragedy