Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener - A Literary Analysis .
Bartleby the Scrivener is a story that takes place on Wall .
Street, peopled by workers of a common mold. Being a non-conformatist of .
the most extreme type, Bartleby is eventually suffers a death of .
attrition. The message that Melville intends for the reader is how .
society has little tolerance for social deviance. .
I mentioned a common mold, the engine which impelled the b.
"society" of Wall Street to keep on existing. This common mold consists .
of working a full day, going home and relax, possibly drinking some beer .
or whatnot. .
This is where the theme of ostracization of social deviance comes .
into play, expressed in the metaphor of individual versus society. Those .
who do not fit into the common mold are pressured to change or are .
removed forcibly. Bartleby is an example of a character that doesnÃt fit .
anywhere even near the mold and is "removed.".
Within this society that upholds the common mold there is a .
hierarchy of obsessive qualities, some of which are admired and others .
which are scorned and deemed to be in the realm of dysfunctionalism. .
Bartleby is character that holds an aesthetic of performing only a single .
action to the exclusion to everything else, this is his obsession.
BartlebyÃs obsession proceeds throught three stages before his .
demise. Initially BartlebyÃs obsession is with his employ as a scrivener .
by the narrator, and works day and night "as if famished for something to .
copy." His obsession is single-mindedly with accomplishing as much .
copying as humanly possible to the exclusion of everything else. The .
first few attempts of the narrator to tell Bartleby to do something else, .
no matter how slight the task, are abortive. The narrator chooses to .
overlook this shortcoming due to the meritorious nature of BartlebyÃs .
obsession for his work. After a series of requests from the narrator .
