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Similar Themes In Bartleby the Scrivener and Young Goodman Brown - Papers Online

Similar Themes In Bartleby the Scrivener and Young Goodman Brown

Both Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" and Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown" relate tales of men who live in highly straightened worlds. In each case we are presented with a character who appears at first as if he should be able to fit into the world of the story - whether that of a Puritan village or that of a Wall Street Firm. But each of them by the end turns out to be unsuited to his world, unable to balance the demands of keeping his own soul in tact and abiding by the conventions established for an individual for his class and gender. This paper examines how, despite the differences of setting and of overall tone that the authors take, the overriding ...

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himself being defined more and more in terms of the labor that he could provide for others and less and less in terms of what he (or she) could do for himself.
Bartleby is a man who has been displaced by industrialization, a man whose soul means nothing at all and who is only of value to society so long as he can work. Bartleby himself seemingly comes to realize this, and rebels against his reduction to a cog in the money-making schemes of others and so rebels in the only way that he cane think of - by trying to convert the office back into a home.

Yet, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor's hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, ...

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Similar Themes In Bartleby the Scrivener and Young Goodman Brown. (2015, September 11). Retrieved January 22, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Similar-Themes-Bartleby-Scrivener-Young-Goodman/104971

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"Similar Themes In Bartleby the Scrivener and Young Goodman Brown." Essayworld.com. September 11, 2015. Accessed January 22, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Similar-Themes-Bartleby-Scrivener-Young-Goodman/104971.

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 9/11/2015 05:46:40 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 708
Pages: 3

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