Download this, print it, read and textmark key words and thematic elements - I will collect it next class as a quiz grade. Also, be sure to post your interpretation of the ending in the comments below!
32 Comments
Luke Devine
1/29/2016 11:11:21 am
The ending of Bartleby the Scrivener is very vague. At the end Battleby starves to death in prison, meaning that he not only fasted, but he also sacrificed himself. This is a reference to certain religious martyrs who sacrificed themselves in order to peacefully preserve their faith. I think that Bartleby did not leave because he was a mere idea, stuck in the narrarators mind. He represented the idea nagging the narrarator that his power was almost nonexistent, as the people he controlled did not have to listen to him. This idea made the narrarator more and more anxious, eventually consuming him and making him act like Bartleby.
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Kelly Farley
1/30/2016 03:06:30 pm
The ending was confusing and I still do not completely understand the last part. Throughout the story, you see the narrator start to act like Bartleby a little more and a little more. I think Bartleby is more of an idea then a person. Meaning, he represents the ability to have free will and doing what he "prefers" to do. The narrator has always lived in this society that does what they are told when they are told to. Once he is introduced to Bartleby and the idea of free-will he begins to admire it. The more the narrator becomes like Bartleby, the more Bartleby becomes distant and ghostly. When the narrator fully understands free will, this is when Bartleby dies. He served his purpose and now he is gone.
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Olivia Smelas
1/31/2016 08:55:06 am
The end of Bartleby the Scrivener was a little confusing, but I have an idea as to what it might mean. I agree with Luke, I think Bartleby is definitely a representation of some kind of martyr. Just like the monk from Vietnam who preferred not to take part in violent protests, and burned himself alive, Bartleby preferred not to work and perpetuate the societal system of confinement. Both the monk and Bartleby made their points in very personal, almost unassuming ways, but look at the way it affected the people around them. The lawyer's office almost fell apart because of Bartleby's persistence, and a video of the monk burning himself alive went viral, and ended up being a major world influence. Both of them expressed their power peacefully. The monk 's actions obviously affected him primarily, and Bartleby simply expressed his preference, and that tore everyone apart. When the lawyer moves his office, leaving the scrivener in his old office, and Bartleby is eventually moved into prison, this could almost be related to the story of Jesus Christ. After shocking the world with his capabilities, he was captured because he was seen as a threat, even though none of what he was doing was in any way wrong. He was captured basically because he was different, and was peacefully expressing himself somewhat within the system. In a similar way, Bartleby was eventually imprisoned because he shocked everyone around him with his capability to say no and his persistence, even though this was technically not illegal or wrong. Bartleby was imprisoned because he did not follow the "flow", just like Jesus. Bartleby stayed inside the office within confinement, and expressed himself there in his refusal to do anything, just like Jesus remained within the law, but spread his teachings and miracles anyway. Jesus died for the sake of his beliefs and his persistence in them, same as Bartleby.
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Biggs
2/7/2016 11:33:32 am
I like the idea of Bartleby as a Christ-Figure; as we've seen with John Proctor, Randle McMurphy, V, and many other characters, this trope is really common in English and American literature. The interesting thing is, despite the fact that scholars know less about Jesus's life than we would like to, it is clear that he was going around preaching a philosophy in complete conflict with the ruling Roman Empire, making Jesus closer to Harrison Bergeron, who's killed because he's a threat. But Bartleby, as you say, does nothing technically illegal, just refuses to "go with the flow." Jesus DOES break Roman law by speaking publically against their religion of Emperor-worship, but Bartleby just does nothing. And yet, that's a violation of the Law, too. This is worth pursuing!
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Makenzie Lowrey
1/31/2016 10:33:23 am
I see that everyone is with me in thinking the ending was vague/confusing. I think the whole "dead-letters" thing was weird, too. Maybe the point is that he's a ghost, and died once he lost his dead-letters position??? I honestly don't know I am so confused please help.
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hannah daitz
1/31/2016 11:12:26 am
The ending was very vague. I am not sure if Bartleby dies or just goes to work elsewhere. In the last paragraph the narrator used a form of the word "die" seven times. Because of this i do think Bartleby starved himself to death because he didn't want to eat. I also think he was so fixated on staring at the brick wall because he was looking for an answer. I don't know what question he had, but I think it had to do with freedom. Freedom in the sense that everything is optional. Society has the tendency to follow the general rules and I think Bartleby challenges him. He specifically reminds me of (I forget her name but the lady in V for Vendetta that is in the room next to V) because she says they can take everything from you except your will. And Bartleby is the freedom of will.
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Trey Soya
1/31/2016 01:38:03 pm
The life of Bartleby is a very sad and confusing life. I was shocked at the ending. It all happened so fast and too soon. All of a sudden, Bartleby was just dead laying there. There were a couple of Bible references in the short story and they stuck out to me that I thought would help me understand the story more. I thought of Bartleby as a Christ figure because he starved himself and it seems like he sacrificed himself. He lived a life of misery. I have a couple questions about the ending. Whyy did he sacrifice himself? Did he save anyone or anything? Or did he just die from reading all the sad death letters which lead him to become depressed.
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Sydney Gannon
1/31/2016 03:34:51 pm
Bartleby's story as a whole was kind of confusing because he never said much about himself and you never got to see who he really was. I also agree that the ending was very vague and happened very suddenly and randomly. No one knew that he was really dead until the narrator went up to him and was shocked and no one was there to check on him either and it confused me. I took from this that he was dead inside throughout the story because multiple people said he was ghostly and they mention him staring at the "dead wall" outside of his window. He is slowly deteriorating as the story moves forward. I did not fully understand the death letters at the end either. Preferring not to eat or do anything with his life killed him.
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Erin Ostrowski
1/31/2016 03:59:28 pm
Some parts of this story were very confusing in my opinion. At first, Bartleby is a defiant employee who seems inspirational. But then as the story progresses, I thought he seemed lazy and then I thought he had given up on life altogether. By the time he got to prison and refused to eat, I believed he was insane and simply didn’t care about anything. This progression makes him seem a lot like a ghost, like other people have mentioned, because he slowly fades away from his will to live. Honestly, I think he was depressed from the content and the losing of his previous job. His refusals of everything resulted in his demise and I personally don’t think he was a martyr of any kind because he wasn’t trying to prove anything or fight for a cause. He simply preferred to do absolutely nothing and become one of his “dead” walls.
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Ash Riegler
1/31/2016 04:59:07 pm
The ending of Bartleby the Scrivener was very confusing and made almost no amount of sense. But then again most things do seem the way upon first looks. I'm sure a bit of deeper thinking could reveal some hidden profound meaning. But I don't quite understand it yet. The ending was almost as strange as Bartleby himself. His life was almost insignificant in the way he came into the story only to do absolutely nothing. Perhaps his meaning was simply to change the narrator. But Bartleby seemed to almost drive the narrator mad. A man who wasn't used to disobedience and then for some reason continued to put up with such. He himself said it was simply out of pity for Bartleby. But I'm not so sure that was the only reason. Overall, the ending seems to be one you really need to think one and even read over in order to get. But as it stands now, I don't quite understand.
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Shelley Banfield
1/31/2016 06:11:27 pm
I think that Bartleby represents the human will to resent power. When told to do something, he always gave himself options by saying, "I prefer to...". Bartleby had the option of whether or not to do something based on his mood at the time.(which is something we should all take from this) When the narrator asked him to do tasks other than copy, he refused. When Bartleby was asked to leave the office, he refused and when prisoners told him to eat, he didn't. Bartleby physically embodied defiance so when he died, his resentment passed along as well. This caused the narrator to be upset because Bartleby intrigued and challenged him in an almost inhuman way. I think Bartleby tried to express the idea of disobedience, no one he met would forget the 'silent' and 'strange' man who didn't comply then went to jail then starved himself to death.
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Ford Zacks
1/31/2016 07:30:24 pm
I thought that the ending of the story was very odd. Bartleby represents pure disobedience, but at the same time he is not disobedient. He never says that he won’t do anything. He only says that he prefers not to do something. He never did the work his boss asked him to do because he preferred not to do it. He then went to the extreme of not eating when he was told to which led to his death. I am not sure why Bartleby was disobedient. In the closing passage the narrator says that he learned that Bartleby worked in a dead letter office. It is possible that Bartleby became truly hopeless in life after working in such a morbid place. However, I think that he did it because he did not like risk. Over and over again he says that he does not want change. I think that he is trying to say that he does not like taking risks. After seeing so much death he thinks that change only leads to death. Bartleby is a very mysterious individual. The motives for his suicide are odd, yet they teach a lesson. Change can be good or bad, but cutting yourself off from everything is not a solution. By being disobedient it led to change. He was sent to prison and he died. I cannot tell if Bartleby did not have a plan or if he wanted to die. Maybe someone else has the answer.
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Bridget Kelly
1/31/2016 07:38:29 pm
The ending of Bartleby is very abrupt and vague. He ended up and jail and it wasnt long until he starved himself to death. If the narrator didnt have a line that stated he was dead, i wouldn;t have been sure if thats what had happened. In a way, the author seemed to hint that Bartleby was dead throughout the whole story, we just saw him slowly killing himself by refusing to do anything. When the narrator would speak to Bartleby, he mentioned how his eye were dead and cold symbolizing how he was internally dead.
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Willow Martin
1/31/2016 07:49:32 pm
Bartleby is a perfect and profound representation of civil disobedience. To me, Bartleby is one who, through his experience, has been enlightened to the true nature of society. He has seen the dead letters, all the human voices lost in society's strict system. He has seen the lack of humanity in society, how they burn the letters that were not (for whatever reason) delivered. He knows society must change. Therefore, Bartleby refuses to participate in actions that he believes will help the machine of society to function. He reaches the point where he refuses to even eat, for he knows the food the prison will provide for him has been produce by the same unjust system he is trying to disrupt. Eventually, he dies for his cause, permanently making himself immovable in the society's machine, the stillness of death paralleling how he, as a cog in society, will never again budge to help the corrupt system function.
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Alexis Disbrow
1/31/2016 08:06:07 pm
The ending of this story is confusing and seemed to happen very fast. Bartleby was pretty much killing himself throughout the story and was described as ghost like, pale, weak, and to have dead eyes. He was disobedient to everything and everyone and that caused him to be put in jail where even there he displayed disobedience. Bartleby starved himself to death because he preferred not to eat and stared silently at a wall. The ending was hard to understand and left me very confused. Why did he starve himself? Was he trying to display disobedience at a more extreme level? Was he insane?
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Seamus Cochrane
2/1/2016 03:58:26 pm
With Bartleby's death, he became the ultimate symbol of passive resistance. Even though he didn't support any cause, protestors and prophets alike would all have shed a tear at his actions. He quietly refused to do anything that he didn't want to do, and eventually made it so that he was begrudgingly accepted by his peers. Had he done it any other way, such as losing his cool or even changing the wording of his phrase "I would prefer not to", then his spell of resistance would have been broken and he would have been thrown out on his ear. In regard's to Bartleby's previous occupation, I think it is the source of his passive resistance and mild-mannered ways. His job was to sort the letters of the deceased, and decide which ones were to be burned and which ones were to be saved. He must have spent countless hours reading the words of dead men; confessions, proclamations of loves lost, regrets, and hateful curses damning their fate. It would have taken its toll on him. If I were to guess what happened, I would say that one letter in particular rocked him to his very core, and he decided to renounce his position. Furthermore as he drifted through his life, he decided to no longer do anything that he wasn't inclined to do, which would eventually turn him into Bartleby the scrivener, the symbol of passive resistance.
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Suubi Mondesir
2/1/2016 04:03:31 pm
Overall, I thought the ending of "Bartleby The Scrivener" was strange but could be seen in many differnent lights. I feel as though alot happened but nothing happened at the same time. For example the ending was mainly Bartleby "prefering" not to do anything which is "nothing really happening". However the narrator moved offices and Bartleby died, which is "alot happening". Yet the ending can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, Bartleby can be dipicted as weak and the cause of his own gradual death and destruction. Or you could see Bartleby as using civil disobediance, landing him in jail, like MLK. Additionally, Bartleby can be seen as an idea that can't be killed, similar to V, the other, outside of society's norm and what they choose to except. Or maybe he's just another crazy person. I believe Bartleby is a little bit of all these view points, which make him who he is.
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Biggs
2/7/2016 11:19:58 am
All the possibilities you mention - Bartleby is weak, Bartleby is peacefully resistant like Thoreau or MLK, Bartleby is the unkillable idea of Disobedience like V, or Bartleby is simply insane like Emily Grierson in "Rose." What all these possibilities have in common is a refusal to accept any STANDARD as worth of conformity. What, then, might Melville want us as readers to take away from Bartleby?
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Courtney Fenty
2/1/2016 04:58:25 pm
The ending of Bartleby the Scrivener was the most confusing thing, and the whole story is still vey confusing. To say if Bartleby was actually real or not, I'm not sure. People saw him, but he was always referred to as ghostly and unhuman. Bartleby went through his days doing as he pleased, but what he pleased to do was nothing. He didn't work, he didn't eat much or not at all, and he didn't go anywhere. He liked to stay confined yet free because when he was pht into prison he was angry. Maybe he was angry because he was put into someplace he didnt want to be. The narrator, starting off mean and then having more and more compassion for Bartleby, was starting to act like him also. He started to say "prefer" but thats mostly as far as it went. Bartleby was very peculiar. Maybe he portrays the unconscious mind in the fact that, something is always there but we try to push it away as much as possible until it is too hard to not notice it.
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Akin Gaddis
2/1/2016 05:12:23 pm
This story is fairly easy to understand up until the end of it. At this point the story takes an odd turn, well odder than the rest of the story has been. Bartleby is taken to jail and refuses to eat because " he prefers not to." The narrator,Bartleby's boss comes to visit the office and finds out that Bartleby has died. The only information that you find out about Bartleby is that he used to work at a Dead Letters Office. Dead letters are letters that cannot be delivered to the recipients. The Narrator suspects that this has some connection to Bartleby's desire to do nothing. I also suspect that this is connected. However I have no idea how; the sorrow of these letters affected him.
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Olivia Jordan
2/1/2016 05:47:42 pm
As Willow said above, Bartleby is the epitome of civil disobedience. His response "I would prefer not to," does not enact any violence or harm. His lack of radical "rebellion" is what has sparked an interest in his outlook on the world. The world sees him as being "not normal" but truthfully, I believe he has the most accurate and honest perception of society. Unlike everyone else who has taken it upon themselves to follow a scripted play called "life", he doesn't fit a "role" therefore he is questioned. When the narrator finds him dead and he is asked whether Bartleby will eat or not he responds, " Lives without dining". This quote is showing that although he hasn't done much thought life (not dining), his abnormal legacy will live on through the telling of this story. We find out that Bartleby had a job involving dead letters, or letters that are undeliverable. These out of place letters could symbolize his "out of place" life that couldn't be categorized among the boxes society has created. This story was most likely created to awaken the curiosity in those who are stuck living their lives for the sake of society.
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Biggs
2/7/2016 11:28:18 am
I've mentioned the sociologist Erving Goffman before, the guy who sees all social life as performance and would completely agree with your view of life as a set of "parts" we're expected to play according to society's directing. One of the feminist theorists we discussed, Judith Butler, uses Goffman''s ideas to explain how gender roles are just social constructs, "scripts" consists of ways to speak, move, dress, etc. that create the EFFECT of "MALE" or "FEMALE" in the same way an actor creates the effect of John Proctor or Blanche DuBois. Bartleby, then, refuses to play a role, and so the effect he creates is one of confusion - sort of like if an actor went off-script in the middle of a well-known performance, leaving the audience wondering what the hell is going on. So, is Bartleby a reminder that there IS no "director" in life, just the semi-conscious Superego with its ideas of "normality," by which we've all been brainwashed?
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Jackie Izzo
2/1/2016 05:55:10 pm
I think we could all agree that the ending was very abrupt and not expected, but i liked the ending it puts everyone on edge and makes them think. Although, the end is interesting with the Dead Letters, it is a little confusing. I think the end portion was the narrator recapping Bartlby's miserable life, and how he didnt do much with his life (ending in his death letters). I feel that those papers he was writing in the office were Bartlby’s death letters. Overall I really likes this short story and it really got me thinking.
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Rachel Kline
2/1/2016 06:33:45 pm
I think Bartleby basically killing himself represents the need for people to understand others. I think that if we don't take the time to get to know and understand someone "different" then it could tear them apart to an extreme. If a person feels like no one understands them or wants to take the time to even attempt, they will feel terrible about themselves.
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Kay Franzese
2/1/2016 07:04:57 pm
I thought that the ending of Bartleby the Scrivener was very interesting. I believe Bartleby was somewhat the V of this story because he had a sense that something was wrong with this society ,and he had to disrupt it or help someone acknowledge it. It was clear that Bartleby was feared by the people in the story, especially by the narrator. Instead of running away from him, the narrator was curious to seek out Bartleby's purpose for being here. The narrator seemed a bit like Evey to me because when Bartleby died in the prison it seemed that the narrator was taking over Bartleby's idea of how horrible the society was. Overall, Bartleby was following his morals and going against the idea of "normal" life (Thoreau's civil disobedience) and his disturbance left a mark and/or gave hope to someone who could continue his hope for a better society.
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Biggs
2/1/2016 07:10:44 pm
Our discussion in Block 2B zeroed in on two competing and in many ways opposed readings of the story, depending on whether you take Bartleby as a literal person or a representation of an Idea (like V).
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Brad Chavero
2/1/2016 08:08:57 pm
This was honestly the most unique short story I think we’ve read all year. The ending to me seemed very abrupt and very extreme. Sure, Bartleby was extremely annoying. very repetitive, and even more annoying, but killing him off to me seemed wrong since he probably would have preferred not to die. Bartleby spends the whole story standing his ground and defending his decisions so firmly, that for him to want to die doesn’t sound like a logical step to me. Bartleby literally was a resistor and that means he would refuse to do anything whether it be work for the narrator, food, and especially death! Bartleby, I believe had a grand goal, one that I cannot be certain of but I believe it was big. I think it is entirely possible he was trying to take over the company or end it or actually get his boss to quit. He always refused changing any routines that involved him leaving the property so it’s obvious that he still wanted to stay there for a reason. He also knew that his boss was at his mercy with all the chances, time, money and persistence he put into Bartleby. Bartleby had to have realized early on that he could manipulate the man to do anything which is why he likely continued his behavior, knowing that his boss would give up first. This would also explain why Bartleby was taken prisoner so quickly as any serious warnings with time to respond would have resulted in his disappearance. Plus, once finally imprisoned, Bartleby finally talks more and uses a broader range of words! He knew what he was doing to his boss and it would have worked had the police and his boss’s boss not interfered. Realizing that his time consuming plan had been foiled, Bartleby called it quits and ended his life.
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Biggs
2/9/2016 04:48:31 pm
This is a really interesting take on the story. I want to introduce the more radical possibility that failure WAS Bartleby's purpose - to show that this social order of property and laws and bosses is inherently flawed. He is the anti-superego, and instead of wanting to "win" at society's games, he just wants to negate them, even to the point of refusing to LIVE by their rules at the end. He haunts the lawyer as a reminder at all of the customs that govern our lives are fictions, like a giant play in which we all participate mindlessly until something reminds us that, as Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysts) put it, "there is no Other of the Other" - there is nothing behind the superego that governs society except for society's own demand. Through his stupidity (which literally means a stuttering or muteness), Bartleby reveals the meaninglessness that haunts meaning, just as the unconscious drive haunts all conscious belief.
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Liliana Krupinski
2/2/2016 04:23:08 am
I wasn't sure what a "subordinate clerk in the dead letter office at Washington" was so I looked it up and found that it was a job you could have back then. When letters weren't delivered where they were supposed to go, they were sent to the dead letter office and sometimes the clerks working there could identify where the letters were supposed to go and resent them. Most of the time, the letters were just burned. In a way, I think that Bartleby's old job working there could signify how he died. By the end of the story, Bartleby ended up somewhere he thought he wasn't supposed to be (prison). He died just the way the letters would be burned if they didn't end up in the right place.
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Biggs
2/7/2016 11:16:23 am
This is especially cool when you link it up with the very last line - "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!" Is there some way we all end up like the dead letters, as Bartleby ended up somewhere he didn't prefer to be? Obviously those people who wrote the letters wanted them to get somewhere, but our preferences don't always seem to matter...
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Kathleen Patterson
2/10/2016 12:21:37 pm
I took the ending in such a way that Bartleby was a man who died not specifically for a cause, but he left an effect behind. He died as his own being and because of his own choices, and his “Liv[ing] without dining,” means that his ideals will survive with everyone who he stated his preferences to, even though he is no longer living. Further, it could be a comment on the fact that he never did anything in life quite like anyone else went about doing the things they thought were necessary for survival, such as eating or doing their job. When the narrator depicts that "sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave", he further solidifies that pieces of people who die are left behind, whether physical or soulful, and Bartleby left a piece behind that is now in the narrator`s mindful possession.
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Danielle
8/22/2020 12:19:28 pm
The part with the dead letters is actually a representation of a missed communication. Dead letters, are letters that never meet their recipient. It represents the missed communication that the narrator and Bartleby have.
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