Bartleby

Though Bartleby's most prominent quality is strangeness, Melville makes him real to us. It is, in fact, Bartleby's strangeness that makes him so real. The world is teaming with men like Bartleby, men who live their lives in the lines of soup kitchens. Men who live on the support of Christian charity, until this sort of life becomes too much for them. Until the day, like Bartleby, they lay down in the grass and succumb to the demands of a nature that is indifferent to the plight of humanity.

We encounter the unbelievable strangeness of Bartleby shortly after we meet him. It is Bartleby's strange behavior that strikes a chord in the heart of the narrator. This strangeness is what keeps the narrator from dismissing Bartleby on the spot: "had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. . . .But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, to

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Category: Literature - B