Rebels And Non-Comformists In Melville's Stories
Rebels And Non-Comformists In The Short Stories Of Herman Melville
In many of the short stories written by the American author Herman Melville (1819-1891), the main characters tend to exhibit some form of rebellion, usually against the normal dictates of society or against those who are in power. This trait is most often associated with the non-conformist, a person who refuses to conform to a generally accepted pattern of thought or action. Of course, Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," first published in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, contains one of the prime examples of the Melvillian rebel, being Bartleby himself. In essence, Bartleby, along ...
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the non-violent resistance found in the likes of Henry David Thoreau, one of Melville's contemporaries. The mystery surrounding Bartleby's strange behavior--why he chooses to rebel so completely yet so politely--is never revealed in the story, even though the unnamed, prosperous lawyer/narrator suggests that Bartleby may be the victim of extreme isolation from working in the government's Dead Letter office. Thus, the ambiguity of Bartleby's rebellion makes this tale more complex and leaves it open to many interpretations.
Some scholars have described Bartleby as a frustrated artist/writer who "is protesting the world's warped preference for money over art" (Hamilton, 220); others contend that Bartleby is a reflection of Melville himself who understood all too well what it was like to be an alienated worker with a boring, demeaning job in a subtly hostile environment as a clerk in a customhouse (Chase, 178). Bartleby has also been seen as a representative of non-conformity, the ...
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society as a whole. And like many other non-conformists in the history of American literature, Bartleby prefers death over conformity, for at the conclusion of the tale, he apparently curls up in a fetal position on the floor of his jail cell and literally dies from starvation, another symbol of his rebellious nature.
Several other tales written by Herman Melville also contain characters that by their very natures are rebellious and non-conformists. In 1856, The Piazza Tales, a collection of Melville's short fiction, was published by Dix and Edwards; prior to this, between 1853 and 1855, Putnam's Monthly Magazine printed five (including "Bartleby the Scrivener") of Melville's ...
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"Rebels And Non-Comformists In Melville's Stories." Essayworld.com. April 11, 2016. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Rebels-And-Non-Comformists-Melvilles-Stories/105546.
"Rebels And Non-Comformists In Melville's Stories." Essayworld.com. April 11, 2016. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Rebels-And-Non-Comformists-Melvilles-Stories/105546.
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