Herman Melville: Bartleby The Scrivener

[Libra]

Whoever wants to discuss it,here is the link:

Bartleby

I would prefer not to...

 

[Libra]

I started reading it and almost gave up. I like in the begining where he talks about the different personalities of the scriveners and how they are different but seem to balance each other out.

The Lawyer had an office on Wall Street,I don't know if it has anything to do with it.

It seems that Bartleby was objecting to something when he kept "I would prefer not to" constantly.(which was very funny)

I read somewhere that when Bartleby was first published,it was around the same time that Moby Dick did not do well at all in the market.
(I will try and find the article) and also,Moby Dick did not becoma a classic until way after his death.

 

[Robert]

I don't think he was objecting to anything, Libra. I think he just didn't want to do what was being asked of him.

 

[Libra]

I found the link:sparknotes

 

[Eva]

The Lawyer had an office on Wall Street,I don't know if it has anything to do with it.

Bartleby's window has no view except the neighborning building's wall. I felt that this was a symbol for Wall Street. Melville had the prospect of working on Wall Street, but he dreaded the idea. I took the story to be that being blocked by that wall crushes Bartleby, and this reflected Melville's fear.

 

[Libra]

Bartleby's window has no view except the neighborning building's wall. I felt that this was a symbol for Wall Street. Melville had the prospect of working on Wall Street, but he dreaded the idea. I took the story to be that being blocked by that wall crushes Bartleby, and this reflected Melville's fear.

I really liked the detail thoughts from the sparknotes on this subject,

His refusal of the Lawyer's requests has been read as a critique of the growing materialism of American culture at this time. It is significant that the Lawyer's office is on Wall Street; in fact, the subtitle of "Bartleby" is "A Story of Wall Street." Wall Street was at this time becoming the hub of financial activity in the United States, and Melville (as well as other authors, including Edgar Allan Poe) were quick to note the emerging importance of money and its management in American life. Under this reading, Bartleby's stubborn refusal to do what is asked of him amounts to a kind of heroic opposition to economic control.

 

[Robert]

What the importance of Bartleby's priior job in the dead letter office?

 

[Libra]

What the importance of Bartleby's priior job in the dead letter office?

I was thinking it had to do with his unpublished work Dead Letter Office

items ended up in this office, where enclosed items of value..

 

[Robert]

I was thinking it had to do with his unpublished work Dead Letter Office

Nope.

But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration.

 

[Libra]

Nope.

I think if it wasn't some kind of importance he would not mention it at all and the reason why I am linking it to Melville's work is because he found his work(Moby Dick) to be "value" but it didn't get the appreciation he thought it deserved hence being in a room full of other papers/letter.

I could be wrong,I am still pondering it.