Bartleby The Shrivener
Bartleby, the shrivener
Interpreted by
Kurt Jakobsen
Thesis: misunderstood humanity can be more devastating to people struggling with mentally problems, than doing nothing at all.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) wrote this story and published it in 1853, and is now one of the most famous short stories ever written. Melville tended to concentrate his writing about human communication, or lack of communication, and this Novell is no exception.
Setting
The story is set in New York City, on Wall Street. At that time it had become the centre of American business (1850s), and technological and economical changes reshaped daily life in a dramatic way. This new way of living, made a huge contrast to the traditional hard, but various labour, more or less unchanged for centuries. In this story, we as readers can imagine how boring and unsatisfying many of these jobs wore, in a time where computers didn’t exist, and work had to be done manually. The scriveners were a part of the modern machinery, and existed in a time and a world were men went to work, earned their pay, went home, and seemed to continue to their dying day.
Characters
The Narrator: Mellville starts his story: I am a rather elderly man, an later on; Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. This statement reveals that this man is a well-respected ...
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