Bartleby the Scrivener

1
Bartleby the Scrivener

• A Story of Wall Street

2
Herman Melville

• Born 1819 and Died 1891
• His father, Allan Melvill was a dry goods
  merchant who often borrowed money, from family
  and friends, either because he was sure that his
  investments would pay off, or because he was
  afraid that an economic recession was on the
  horizon.
• In 1832 his father suddenly fell ill and died in
  a delirium that some thought of as madness.
• His father died massively in debt.
• After the death of his father, his family changes
  the spelling of his last name.

3
Herman MelvilleSource The Norton Anthology of
American Literature

• Herman is taken out of school at the age of 12
  and begins working at a bank, in a fur-cap
  store, on a farm, at a country school, as a
  surveyor, and then, eventually, as a sailor.

4
Popular and Financial Successes

• Typee 1846
• Omoo 1847
• Redburn 1849
• Whitejacket 1850

5
Critical and Financial Failures

• Mardi 1849
• Moby Dick 1851
• writ de lunatico
• Pierre 1852
• Herman Melville is Crazy

6
New York 1850s
7
19th century NYC
8
Narrator Bartleby

• Narrator never named
• What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby,
  that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one
  vague report which will appear in the sequel.

9
Turkey, Nippers, Ginger Nut
10
Narrator

• 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.

11
Bartleby

• I can see that figure nowpallidly neat, pitiably
  respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.

12
I would prefer not to
13
Disarming

• But there was something about Bartleby that not
  only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful
  manner touched and disconcerted me.

14
Diet

• Ginger-nuts are so called because they contain
  ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and
  the final flavoring one. Now what was ginger? A
  hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not
  at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon
  Bartleby. Probably he preferred it should have
  none. Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as
  a passive resistance.

15
Why Help Bartleby?

• Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious
  self-approval.

16
Trinity Church

• Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to
  Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher,
  and finding myself rather early on the ground, I
  thought I would walk around to my chambers for a
  while.

17
Disarmed, Unmanned

• Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly,
  which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as
  it were.

18
Most Information

• "At present I would prefer not to be a little
  reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.

19
Love

• Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can
  be enlisted, should, especially with
  high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity
  and philanthropy.

20
Abandonment

• The man is nothing to me.

21
Unreasonable

• I would not like it at all though, as I said
  before, I am not particular.

22
The Tombs Prison
23
(No Transcript)
24
The Tombs Yard

• But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The
  heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed,
  wherein, by some strange magic, through the
  clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung.

25
Dead

• Lives without dining.
• With kings and counselors.