Bartleby, The Scrivener

Week 3 Blog: (8/30-9/3)

This week, I learned by reading "Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Herman Melville that characters can influence each other in a story. In class, we examined both the characters of Bartleby and the boss. Bartleby was considered isolated, strange, perhaps mentally ill, and depressed. Because he acts strange and refuses to comply with his boss, the boss undergoes a change in his own character. Unsure of what to think of his strange, hard-working employee, the boss settles on a compassionate side for Bartleby and learns to become patient through understanding and consideration for the vagrant. In order to understand a story, I realize that a reader must first study the characters and acknowledge how they change, then identity the causes of the change. A story is written because an author intends to tell about his or her characters and show how their morality evolves as other characters and events encounter them.