Term Paper - Symbolism in Bartleby, the Scrivener

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a novella by American author Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts.

The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist."

This essay provides an analysis of the symbolism in Bartleby, the Scrivener.

Essay Text (100 words of 467):

"...Reading Herman Melville's "Bartleby" for the first time, one must wonder whether Bartleby, seemingly the main character, is insane. At this point readers try to assign a proper type of psychiatric disorder to him. During the second reading, the author's commitment to certain objects, such as walls and food in any representation, and specific feelings, such as sadness, solitude, melancholy, seems strange. When I read this novella for the third time, it dawned on me: Bartleby's human cover is just a symbolic representation of the lawyer's inner world, the reflection of his spirit. Bartleby's behavior is eccentric and overdone just ..."

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