Reviews - Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-Street

1.19k reviews for:

Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-Street

Herman Melville

3.73 AVERAGE

banhodecaju's review against another edition

4.0

Angustiante. Moralmente agonizante

mariavdl's review against another edition

1.75

funny mysterious sad

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

sidharthvardhan's review against another edition

5.0

"He was more a man of preferences than assumptions."

You know I often buy food from a local dhabha ( North Indian native restaurants). The waiters and cooks there work 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week before going to bed in a room within restaurants.Their whole life involves for months involves waking up at 6, cleaning the place, cooking, serving all day. Their social life for months is limited to the fellow workers. Many of them start working when they aren't even in teens. Literally no job security. The wages are low too, most of them will never even to make to middle class. They regularly take leaves for a couple of months to return to their families (who are in different states). I always a combination of guilt, sorry and respect for them (they don't, they are happy with their lot not knowing that the luckier people are cheating them), with all my introvertion, physical and mental health, I probably won't last two days in such a life.

Anyway, back to the book. Life comes with a lot of assumptions - the assumption that things can be and are owned by people and you can't use another's things without their permission. Unless you are too rich, you have to earn . To earn, you have to suck up to people especially your bosses. And it could be even worse, if your job is not stimulating for you. Such a job must be like a cancer of individuality and personality. The only way to save people doing such jobs from being torn down and being turned into a function of their job is to keep working hours low so that they can do something more interesting to them in leisure time, unfortunately most of the times, the pay is so low that these very same people are most overworked.

Now some people are able to see them that. That is price of people. Some people whose suffering, from circumstances and/or his psychological health, think that that life is not worth it. They would prefer not to go with the assumptions. Bartleby is one such person. Unfortunately he is poor, so, such nihlism proves fatal to him.

I think the narrator's character was important too. His conflict-aversion makes sure that he doesn't judge Bartleby too quickly. His dillema of choosing between self-interest (the so-called practical choice) and compassionate approaches probably need no ellaboration. The combination of attraction towards Bartleby and frustration he feels when later won't do the 'practical' thing reminds one of different characters' reactions to Myshkin in 'The Idiot'.

Quotes:

Spoiler

"Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance."

"My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invarialbly this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder."

"Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none."