Bartleby the Scrivener, a Tale of Wall Street - Book Report/Review Example

Any way the modern readership of the story is largely due to its capability to generate various interpretations. These various interpretations happen due to the numerous meanings that the words can bring to the readers. This can be done most perfectly by introducing an unreliable narrator. The narrator in Melville's story, the lawyer serves this purpose beautifully.

Many critics remarked about Melville's use of this unreliable narrator. Lawyer himself admits that he is a man of assumptions, and his prejudice prevents him, on many occasions, to give accurate details of the events. After some initial events, like the lawyer's description of Turkey's unpredictable behavior, it is clear for the reader that they need to interpret everything that the narrator tells. This gives a wide opportunity and scope for the readers. The narrator's final statement, "Ah Bartleby!

Ah, humanity" (Melville 2006), is considered the most controversial statement in the story. Some traditional critics interpreted it as the statement of a fraud, who fails to measure Bartleby's essence or a sensitive penetration of a sensible man to the essentiality of meaning. These contrasting definitions point out to the language of Melville, which gives numerous interpretations to the readers. When referring to Moby-Dick, James Guetti has opined that Melville's language is "pervasive, special and artificial kinds of language serve to draw our attention to the limitations of such language" (Guetti 1967).

As in The Metamorphosis, a metamorphosis is seen throughout the story in the case of language. This linguistic metamorphosis suggests the change of lawyer's attitude towards Bartleby at the very crucial juncture when Bartleby's passivity becomes a threat to the professionalism of the lawyer. At this point, the language of the lawyer to describe Bartleby becomes stronger than before. Now "apparition", or a harmless ghost changes to "incubus", or a usurper. (Melville 2006). There are many symbols that Melville used in the story, which turns out to be motifs rather than symbols.

One such symbolism is the finding of the narrator that Bartley has earlier worked with the dead-letter office: "Dead letters! does it sound like a dead man" (Melville 2006). The dead letters have many symbols. It acts as a metaphor for the hard work and toil of the then-emerging middle-class. Wall is another recurrent symbol used in the story. The office room, located on Wall Street, has walls outside when viewed through all the windows. Bartleby has a habit of staring blankly at the walls. The wall is a symbol of the psychological imprisonment of Bartleby.