I'd Prefer Not to Blog About It- Bartelby

    In one of the most bizarre, confusing short stories I have ever read, I still managed to find the theme in Bartelby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. The setting of this story play a huge part in it as well. This is a story of Wall Street and describes what happens to some people with that kind of continuous, repetitive, and mindless work. It can seriously take a toll on a person's life and their functioning as a social person. Clearly, the character Bartelby portrays this happening. It is considered that after working as a "subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed my a change in the administration..." and then as a copier at an office on Wall Street, he may have changed him in a way that his soul was never the same after that (Melville 675). However, though he is the most obvious displayer of the theme, the lawyer speaker also conveys it in a very important way. He is similar to Bartelby in his want to do the least work possible all the time. In the beginning of the novel, he says, "I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury or in a way draws down public applause..." (Mellville 643). Bartelby and the lawyer speaker are both proof of what mindless work can do to a person, which causes Bartelby's insane actions and the speaker's continued sympathy toward him.