I read once that Melville wrote \u201cBartleby the Scrivener\u201d in response to the disappointing success of \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d\u00a0 While I cannot confirm whether or not this is true, it is certainly interesting to compare the two with this in mind.\u00a0 The world of \u201cBartleby\u201d seems to be exactly the kind many of the crewmembers on the Pequod were trying to escape. Ishmael expresses outright contempt for city life or any \u201chonorable, respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever.\u201d\u00a0 He argues that people are drawn in part to the city because of its proximity to water, which represents freedom from the monotony of their everyday lives.\u00a0 Without Ishmael\u2019s willingness to live apart from the norms of society, the events of Moby Dick would never have occurred.
\nIn \u201cBartleby,\u201d then, Melville explores the other side of this surprisingly modern dilemma: people who, unlike Ishmael, cannot escape from the tedium that is office life.\u00a0 If he felt \u201cMoby Dick\u201d had somehow failed in its mission to get this message across, he had to go about addressing the issue in a different way.\u00a0 By placing \u201cBartleby\u201d in a setting that must have been infinitely more relatable for his readers than a whaling ship, Melville might have hoped to more directly challenge the complacency present in everyday life.
\nIn some ways I saw this story as a precursor to absurdist fiction.\u00a0 Bartleby, after all, is a highly unusual character who defies easy categorization.\u00a0 He has fallen into the culture of passivity that modern life fosters through the repetition of boring, daily tasks.\u00a0 However, his similarly passive refusal to take part in this culture is absurd: \u201cI would prefer not to.\u201d\u00a0 It is no coincidence that this is the line people most remember from the story.\u00a0 It would simply not be the same story if Bartleby took radical action to liberate himself from the daily grind of modern life \u2013 it is far more disturbing to follow this man as he passively resists participation in the life society has laid out for him, ultimately dying because of it.\u00a0 By creating this absurd character Melville questions the validity of a society that could create such a person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I read once that Melville wrote \u201cBartleby the Scrivener\u201d in response to the disappointing success of \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d\u00a0 While I cannot confirm whether or not this is true, it is certainly interesting to compare the two with this in mind.\u00a0 The world of \u201cBartleby\u201d seems to be exactly the kind many of the crewmembers on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}