This is the first time I've read Bartleby and I don't think a character and his intentions have ever been so unclear to me. I could list off a hundred questions I have about him. After I learned a little about Melville's life, I found out that him and Hawthorne had been friends and influenced each other's work. I found this really ironic since Hawthorne handed the readers his symbols and clearly displayed his themes, but in Bartleby, we were left with very little information about the protagonist.
In the first paragraph the narrator says he can't write about Bartleby's complete life, establishing his mysteriousness. This mystery was evident throughout the whole writing and left me wondering what the point was. At first it seemed like Bartleby may be taking some sort of stand in his workplace, expressing his freedom, but his boss doesn't get mad at him and expresses the same sort of sympathy I began to feel towards Bartleby. The narrator feels a connection with him. He realizes they are both just men- "For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam".
The last line "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity" left me wondering if the whole point isn't in Bartleby but in the bigger picture, in humanity as a whole. People are confusing, as the narrator clearly expressed and even though he put up with Bartleby for so long, when he finally got him arrested, we see it may have led to his death in prison. It got me wondering if maybe Melville is trying to understand humanity. When should we be sympathetic? When should we get angry and punish someone who is continuously breaking the rules? But then again, I'm confused by this character and what he may represent, so I am sure he embodies much more than what I could put together
You make a good point in comparing Melville to Hawthorne, particularly after reading the two in such close proximity. It's interesting how, in class, we were able to find so many symbols for each character in The Scarlet Letter because of how blatantly Hawthorne points these out to us, but Melville's characters are so opaque and difficult to read. I found that the writing styles of both Melville and Hawthorne are a bit similar in the sense that in both of these authors' works, the plot unfolds slowly and the writing depends heavily on description from the narrator, but the way we understand these works is significantly different.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you, Sam, and also with you Julie, about how difficult it is to break through the cryptic style of Melville's writing. However, I think that part of the charm of the story is the fact that it's left up to the reader's interpretation. I think in some sense that is very Poe-ian of Melville. It's not creepy and there's no surprisingly violent ending in the end of the story (unless you count Bartleby's suicide), but the mystery of the story definitely reminded me of Poe. The sense of confusion in this story reminded me of the way that Poe would start his stories with mysterious aspects and details. In Poe's stories we often got the answer to the mystery, whereas in Bartleby we obviously don't. However, I think that it's a really intriguing intentional choice to leave out any answer because Melville makes his reader do more work than any other author has that we've read so far this semester. In that sense this story seems revolutionary to the mysterious genre of literature that it falls under.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you, Carrie, that part of the joy in Bartleby is the opaque symbolism and Melville's decision to leave interpretation somewhat up to the reader (and I got the Poe-ian vibe too). I prefer Melville's use of symbolism to Hawthorne’s and I think our in-class discussion of the meaning of Bartleby's character was more interesting and productive because people were able to express and hear different ideas. For instance, I like interpreting Bartleby as a representation of the importance of free will and therefore I initially saw his death as a result of his free will being taken away from him when he was imprisoned. Onno pointed out, however, that Bartleby's death is a result of free will, which may be empowering but contrasts my interpretation because the removal of free will does not directly kill Bartleby, since he could have survived in prison. In response, I say that dying through an act of free will is better than living without it, and that becomes my final take away, which is different from my initial interpretation. Bartleby’s openness to interpretation allowed this conversation to happen, whereas I feel Hawthorne’s straightforward presentation allows for less debate.
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