Today was the start of the second week of classes for my English 3010 class. We were assigned to read Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener. It was an interesting one read. On Monday, in class, the students arranged themselves in a circular group and began discussing the assigned reading. Everyone came to an agreement that it was an interesting read. Everyone loved the main character Bartleby. His stubbornness is what made him so irritating but at the same time, the point of focus.
The narrator, an elderly lawyer who had a very comfortable business relates the story of the strangest man he had ever known.
The narrator had employed two scriveners, Nippers and Turkey to help him out with his work. Nippers suffered from indigestion, and Turkey was a drunk. In the mornings Turkey was sober and Nippers was very unproductive. But in the afternoon Nippers calms down even though Turkey was drunk. Hence everything worked out smoothly for the narrator in a bizarre way. The narrator then later on hired a sad and lonely looking young man named Bartleby.
In the beginning, Bartleby was very enthusiatic to work at his place. He would be the frist man to arrive at the office and the last man to leave. He would not even take a lunch break. One day, when the narrator asks Bartleby to help proofread a copied document, Bartleby answers simply, "I would prefer not to." It is the first of Bartleby's many refusals. As time goes by, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer duties around the office. The narrator tried several times to find out the reason for his refusals. But everytime, no matter what , he would give them the same exact answer : I prefer not to.” Soon a point comes, when he is doing no work at all. The narrator felt as if bartleby has a strange kind of control over him. The narrator could not get him to leave.
Thus, out of desperation to get rid of bartleby, the narrator moves his offices to a new location. But bartleby still continues to show up everyday at the same place. Though the new tenants expelled Bartleby from the offices, he still would return back daily. Soon bartleby is arrested and put in prison for refusal to leave the premises. At the prison, Bartleby seems even more gloomy than usual. He refused to eat or drink anything. The narrator returns a few days later to check on Bartleby, only to discover that Bartleby had died out of starvation.
The story ends with a mystery unsolved. No one ever came to find out the reason behind Bartleby’s strange behavior. In all my life this is the first time ever that I read a story with a unsolved mystery. The narrator ends the story abruptly by killing bartleby, leaving room for the readers to make their own conclusions. However, there is one rumor that sort of throws some insight into bartlby’s life. Bartleby previously worked in a Dead Letter Office but lost his job there. The narrator assumes that the dead letters would have made Bartleby's temperament sink into an even darker gloom.
In the class, all week we discussed about various reasons that made Bartleby totally aloof from the social world around him. it was a really lively discussion because everyone in class used their own wild imaginations to come up with a different ways the story might have ended. We even discussed that if the story (orginally writtten in 1856) was to be rewritten in today’s age, what kind of a personality would he have and in what ways would he be similar and different from the old bartleby. One of the interesting suggestions that came up was the today’s ‘New” Bartleby would be kind of a punk with earings and tatoos all over his body. He would a student who would work very hard in the beginning of the semester and then rite in the middle of the semester would suddenly stop working totally. He would still continue taking classes each semester as long as they are in the same room.
In short, this week I really enjoyed going and participating in class. Next week there is some different reading assinment. I hope it is as interesting as Bartleby’s.
