Critical Analysis

Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" tell the people regarding the worsening mental and physical conditions of Bartleby through other people perspectives. Bartleby makes people around him to behave in different ways, by giving a passive resistance. What we learn, helps us to develop values and various stages of of emotions that we have for others. The story point out that conformity is the basic factor for survival. It also suggests that conflicts must be avoided, as it is a natural reaction. Bartleby remains unknown for the readers. His motives remain unknown. The reader is given words and various actions through out the story to denote Bartleby as a psychologically unstable person. It is a story that refers to a man, who is both; mentally and physically unstable. A man who is indifferent to his very own humanity. However, through the wordings of the story, Bartleby's external character is shown to the readers. According to the author, Hunt, Bartleby is illustrated as bearing a character that shows him as having stillness in his character, unhappy and having an unhealthy gloomy mood. It is observed that the characters in the story wrote .There was no appetite, Bartleby had no friends, nor family (1098), and he was alone in the universe.. His eccentricities were involuntary .According to Sundararajan, Bartleby displayed dead wall reveries, which seemed to be some sort of mental illness. All these descriptions and signs point out that there were mental issues with Bartleby. Through out the story, the author threw hints at the reader, speaking of the mental health of Bartleby. A statement given by Melville, “I think he is a little deranged” (1110) speaks about the character's mental condition. Another statement was; "It was his soul that suffered and his soul I could not reach"(1098). Pulling it together, there ...