"I think, sir, he's a little luny, " replied Ginger Nut, with a grin. (Melville par. 47)
On this single line, the entirety of the story resolutely stands, unwavering in purpose. Bartleby was a strange man, and there exists a high probability of his being insane, or otherwise mentally incapacitated. This entire document relates the details of a short segment of the life of Bartleby, a scrivener (writer who performed the functions of a photocopier), and his strange and somewhat pernicious habits.
The first indicator we are given that Bartleby is aught but a normal man is in the first introduction we are given to him. In paragraph 15, our biographer introduces Bartleby, "...-pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!" With this simple statement we see that this business association will be anything but normal for our stolid writer, the attorney.
His description of our subject's silent, pale and mechanical copying of documents in paragraph 18 leads us closer to the conclusion we are desired to draw. Then, when called upon to examine a copy, a common enough happening in a scrivener's office at the time, his reply shocks the author. "I would prefer not to." says the scrivener to his employer(Melville par. 21). It is at this point that a certain amount of friction is introduced into our previously sedentary story arc.
No comments:
Post a Comment