Starfish Link:
https://elcamino.starfishsolutions.com/starfish-ops/
Apollonian and Dionysian Forces in "Bartleby, the Scrivener," "Winter Dreams," and "The Other Woman."
Fiction is all about the conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian forces. Apollonian refers to forces of control and order. Dionysian refers to forces of disruption and chaos. Find these conflicting forces helps you understand the conflict in the stories you read.
For example, in the short story, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," the narrator is obsessed with control and maintaining Apollonian order in his office, but his employee Bartleby proves to be a disruptive Dionysian force. This conflict escalates to its climax. This can be said of all stories, movies, novels, and memoirs. Take this brief autobiographical passage, for example:
Guardian of the Butt Crack
Dad had this thing about pulling weeds in our front yard with no shirt or with a shirt that was too small so that while he was squatting and pulling weeds he was offering the world a panoramic view of his shiny butt crack. My father, an engineer whose income catapulted my family into the middle class, was born and raised on a humble farm in Michigan. For him, affording the public a complimentary view of your butt crack was no big deal. In fact, in his worldview an exposed butt crack was an honorable and distinctive badge worn by plumbers, construction workers, and electricians. But for me, a high-strung, socially awkward middle school student, an exposed butt crack was an abomination: It represented the humiliation and destruction of my family name. This meant when I was supposed to be helping Dad pull weeds in our front yard, I was not squatting and pulling weeds. I was standing behind my father and blocking anyone’s potential view of Dad’s atrocious white buttocks. I was what you might call the Guardian of the Butt Crack.
“What the hell are you doing?” Father asked me one Sunday morning as he looked at me towering above him in the glaring sunlight.
“I’m protecting our family honor from your nefarious butt crack. That’s what I’m doing.”
“You afraid I'll receive a citation from the Butt Crack Police?”
“Dad, I am the Butt Crack Police.”
“A butt crack isn’t going ruin your life. Relax, and roll with the punches.”
“But what if I have a girl over and she sees your monstrous butt crack? That’s a deal-breaker.”
“Seriously?”
“Dad, we don’t live on a farm. We live in the suburbs, and there are codes. So humor me. Put on a shirt that’s big enough to cover your preposterous buttocks and I’ll be more than happy to help you pull weeds.”
“Jesus! You’re crazy!”
“I’m your son. Deal with it.”
When it became clear to my father that I was crazy to my core and stubborn enough to stand behind him from dawn to dusk and block everyone’s view of his egregious butt crack violation, he relented, went into the house, and put on a suitable shirt that would render proper decency and etiquette to our day of hard labors.
Persuading my father to put on a shirt provided me some temporary comfort, but I knew this farm boy from Michigan had a long way to go.
End of Part 1
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
The question contains assumptions that have not been established: "Do you still hit your spouse?" The person addressed with the question may not have a spouse and may not hit anyone.
There is no logic if we break down the premises of statements with these fallacies:
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like a cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is every day foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Also Called Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
Unit on The Meaning of Ambition
Essay Two for 150 Points (Life of Image Vs. Life of Substance)
Option One: To an audience of college students, write a persuasive essay that addresses the contention that "Bartleby, the Scrivener, "Winter Dreams" or "The Other Woman" illustrates the moral principles in David Brooks' online essay "The Moral Bucket List" or Kristen Dombek's online essay "Emptiness." And pertaining to "Emptiness," see "What Happens When We Decide Everyone Else Is a Narcissist."
"Bartleby, the Scrivener":
A crazed narrator who lives in hellish isolation writes about a man, Bartleby, a lowly office worker, who disobeys the narrator in a copy office. As we read the story, we begin to realize that the narrator has no life, no love, no human connections. He only lives for an image of success. But his ambition has brought him nothing. He is so empty and so needy that he writes this story in order to vindicate himself for the hellish life he has chosen. As we read the story, we begin to wonder if Bartleby even exists at all but is merely a phantom, a projection or alter ego of the insane narrator. With no connection to the core in his self and no connection to others, the narrator is in many ways a narcissist.
"Winter Dreams":
Dexter Green is obsessed with the life of image: of American success, trophies, status, oneupmanship. He projects his fantasies on Judy Jones, who becomes his chimera of the American Dream. But living for Judy Jones, a fantasy, a "Winter Dream," if you will, he never lives in the real world and in fact squanders his whole life on a tawdry illusion. Like the narrator in "Bartleby," Dexter Green is a narcissist, an empty soul whose only conviction is to rely on the adulation and approval of others.
"The Other Woman":
The narrator of this story is about to marry a judge's daughter, not for love but for elevated status, and just before marrying his fiance he has an affair, which he rationalizes with the astute potency of a full-fledged narcissist. All 3 characters from the stories are narcissists and victims of unbridled ambition. They have no moral core to counterbalance their vanity and desire for image. All 3 characters live for an imaginary life, not a real life. They are like the people Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, described hundreds of years ago:
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
To paraphrase the above:
We are so vain and narcissistic that too often we put more effort in creating an image than working on the substance of our soul. We don't care or know that we are lost and miserable as long as we have led others to believe that we are happy and good. When we feel incomplete as human beings, we buy a new car so that in enjoying the admiration of others we try to convince ourselves that we are now "complete" and happy. We date and even marry people we don't love because we think that others will admire us, the "power couple" who enjoy "Chanel No. 5 Moments" everywhere we go, where we are the center of attention. As we live for the Chanel No. 5 Moment, we become more and more empty inside, miserable zombies unaware of our decrepit and fraudulent condition.
All 3 characters fit the above description.
Suggested Structure
Paragraph 1: Summarize Brooks' or Dombek's essay. 150 words.
Paragraph 2. Frame the debate of your argumentative thesis by asking how and why the story addresses the major ideas in Brooks' or Dombek's essay. Then answer your question with a thesis. 150 words.
Paragraphs 3-6: Supporting paragraphs: They support your thesis' mapping components. 125 words each for 500
Paragraph 7: Write your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. 150 words.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion: Restate your thesis with emotion (pathos) and show its broader ramifications. 100 words (total is 1,050 words).
If you wish, you can analyze these fallen characters through the following essays as well:
"Emptiness" by Kristen Dombek
"Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks
"Ambition Explosion" by David Brooks
You might also consult Pascal's famous Pensees:
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
Option 2:
Develop a thesis that analyzes "Bartleby, the Scrivener, "Winter Dreams" or "The Other Woman" in terms of the Faustian Bargain described in the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks. Be sure your essay at least 3 sources. You could use a structure similar to one in Option 1. You can also use the documentary Minimalism (2016) as a source for Option #2.
Bear in mind, Option #2 is really the same as Option #1. It's just different wording. In both cases, the exchange of substance for a life of image is the Faustian Bargain.
Sources for Option 1 and 2:
You don't need any resources other than the ones I've provided, but you can use any other sources you see fit as long as you have 3 sources in your Works Cited page.
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
While the narrator in “Bartleby” lacks the mean-spirited vindictiveness of the classic narcissist, he does conform to narcissism’s other characteristics cogently analyzed in Kristin Dombek’s essay “Emptiness.” The narrator’s narcissism becomes evident in light of Dombek’s keen definition when we see that behind all his frenetic verbalizing and posturing is a man consumed by the emptiness of his own soul, which results in an insatiable appetite. He is a man whose life is devoted to the façade of “selfiness,” what Dombek describes as the “simulacrum of the superpowered self.” And finally, he is man who can only associate himself with those who help bolster his life stage as a performance of artist for The American Dream of Success, which is why he is so threatened by the appearance of Bartleby.
Sample #2
While on the surface the narrator in “Bartleby” appears to conform in many ways to Kristen Dombek’s pithy essay “Emptiness” and while he does indeed show a certain narcissism in some of his self-aggrandizing actions, he lacks something fundamental to narcissists: guilt. The story bleeds with the narrator’s guilt and shame throughout, and these emotions are antithetical to narcissism. Whereas the narcissist is single-minded in his pursuit of grandiose “selfiness,” the narrator is a divided soul who is torn by his personal comfort and his Christian obligation to help the Homeless Imp resulting in his unbearable guilt. Whereas the narcissist is single-minded in his pursuit of the perfect stage to conduct his performance, the myopic narrator compromises his stage by living in a condition of squalor that contradicts his grandiose description of his workplace, which speaks to the shame he experiences for a life of self-betrayal. And finally, while the narcissist is single-minded in his association with only those who, as Dombek observes, help the narcissist maintain his illusion of “selfiness,” the narrator co-exists with a bunch of ragtag idiots as his underlings who compromise his “simulacrum of the superpowered self.” This work arrangement speaks to the narrator’s cowardice and general dysfunction, which surely afflict him with shame and self-loathing. To conclude, the narrator is too much of a guilt-ridden coward to be the smarmy sociopathic narcissist described in Dombek’s masterful essay.
Thesis Sample #3:
I will concede that the narrator in “Bartleby” has almost too much of a soul to be a classic narcissist. I will further concede that the narrator is soaked with guilt, shame, and self-loathing, characteristics we don’t associate with the classic sociopathic narcissist. But let us not take our eye off the ball: The narrator is in many ways a virulent narcissist and he embodies many of the grotesque qualities discussed in Kristin Dombek’s lively essay “Emptiness.” He is clearly more interested in promoting the appearance of being charitable toward Bartleby rather than being genuinely charitable. He is clearly more interested in promoting the appearance of being prudent, self-possessed, and wise than in actually having those qualities. He is clearly more interested in curating his entire life as one of success, on other people’s terms, than finding success on his own terms. And finally, like all narcissists, the narrator is clearly driven by an unrelenting appetite for other people’s approval, which belies his own chronic emptiness.
Sample #4
If you feel you're slogging through McMahon's insufferable English 1C class, you're not alone. Many of us are growing impatient with McMahon's biased, unfair treatment of the poor narrator from "Bartleby, the Scrivener." McMahon is painting the narrator as a virulent narcissist, a cruel soul who does not exact true compassion on the homeless Imp, but in fact McMahon is guiding us down a dark, intractable rabbit hole. A close look at the story shows that the narrator's treatment of Bartleby does not evidence a narcissist at all but rather a kind, patient, long-suffering gentleman. Over and over, Bartleby defies the narrator and violates the narrator's clearly stated office policies, but over and over the narrator turns the other cheek and goes out of his way to lend a helping hand to the bereft homunculus. Clearly, the narrator is a gentle, kind soul who has done everything that is reasonable to employ Bartleby and to help this troubled, disaffected youth. Trying to label the narrator, who sacrifices his health and sanity for the defiant employee, a narcissist shows how deeply misguided McMahon is. Clearly, McMahon is trying to impose his own personal agenda and is showing that for the teaching the rigors of advanced literature he is clearly out of his league. I suggest McMahon stick to teaching remedial grammar, punctuation, and MLA research methods. Sorry, McMahon, but your narcissistic essay angle stinks to high heaven. If you wish me to discuss this further with you, I'll meet you at HomeTown Buffet.
Sample Introduction That Transitions to a Thesis
In the age of social media, we curate our own lives. A curator is a guide who controls the message. He is the custodian of his own self-image. Indeed, in the age of social media we curate our own lives, often emphasizing that which makes us look successful and desirable and concealing that which makes puts us in a less flattering light. The danger of being our own curator is that we begin to believe in our own BS. For the last two decades, I’ve curated myself as an intellectual, one who passionately engages in my three loves, reading, writing, and piano playing, but I’ve recently had an awakening in which I realized that thousands of hours lazily spent on the Internet have compromised my intellectual life rendering me somewhat of a fraud to others and myself. My awakening is partly the result of four books: So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter. I am not alone in realizing I’ve squandered thousands of hours engaging in mindless clicking before an Internet screen. My friend, who is far more brilliant than I am, described his wasted existence in the following email:
Like you, I got lost and wasted tens of thousands of hours on the internet. I'm wondering when I reached my 10,000 hours of internet mastery? If I started regular use around 1995, and I averaged at least a few hours a day (which increased over the years to a current and embarrassing 8+/day...my job allows me to spend half or so of the eight-hour shift on the internet, then I'm on a few hours at night), I'm guessing I achieved Internet Mastery by about 2000 or so. I've probably logged 50,000 hours or so by now...which means I could have mastered five different art forms by now. What a tragic waste.
My friend and I both agreed that we’re going to drastically cut down our Internet use and devote ourselves to “deep work,” defined by Cal Newport as prolonged periods of mental discomfort resulting from giving singular concentration to one’s craft. We can only make this change because our self-curated image as “intellectuals” has proven to be a false one in the face of our wasted Internet time. Hopefully, we will change and no longer be curators of a lie.
Sadly, the Great Curator of BS Himself, the narrator of “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” is doomed to a life of stagnation and moral decrepitude because he embodies the recalcitrant characteristics of a narcissist discussed in Kristin Dombeck’s essay “Emptiness” evidenced by __________________________, ______________________________, ___________________________, and ____________________________________.
4 Questions We Must Ask About Our Introduction:
One. Is it authentic?
Two. Is it compelling and hook the reader? (sometimes we have to be personal and gut-wrenching)
Three. Is it relevant to our thesis?
Four. Does it transition to our thesis?
“I Would Prefer Not To”
“I would prefer not to” is not bald defiance. It is more subtle resistance.
Bartleby seems to be offering passive resistance or passive noncompliance. Not only is Bartleby rejecting his boss’s orders specifically, but he is also rejecting society’s scripts, which encourage us to become mindless workers and consumers: docile, compliant sheep who conform to society’s blueprint for living, which in reality is a form of death.
He seems to be not only rejecting his boss’s order but also rejecting his boss’s entire existence, as if to say, “I would prefer not to turn out like you.” Thus Bartleby’s mantra can be seen as an existential admonishment against the narrator: “Your life is a bunch of phony BS, and I’m not following your path.”
Bartleby’s words are more damning because he remains calm, lucid, polite, and firm evidencing that he is not being capricious or impulsive. In contrast, his boss is overcome by anxiety by Bartleby’s noncompliance and Bartleby’s cool-headedness gives him the upper hand.
The dynamic between subordinate—the cool one—and boss—the anxiety-laden one—is not a dynamic that the narrator wishes to have because such a dynamic contradicts the narrator’s delusion that he is a cool-headed authority figure who has control over his office and his life. Bartleby is living evidence that the narrator’s life is a precariously stacked pack of cards made into a tower that will collapse any second.
The story speaks to the way most of us create these elaborate facades that blind us from the foolishness and wasted lives that define us.
The narrator’s response is one of great agitation. However, he is more curious than offended, so he is not ready to fire Bartleby just yet.
The narrator also feels helpless to do anything about it, but rationalizes that he “will forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future leisure.”
A few days later, Bartleby issues the same refusal and the narrator is, by his own words, “turned into a pillar of salt.” This speaks to the narrator no longer being a living being but a dead man, a creature of petrification, a mummy with money.
The words, “I would prefer not to” also contrast Bartleby’s conviction with the narrator’s self-doubt and cowardice. He must rely on his other employees to tell Bartleby—and himself—that Bartleby’s noncompliance is unacceptable and crazy because in part the narrator lacks the core conviction to make his reprimand on his own.
Narrator Sees Bartleby at Work on a Sunday
“Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher . . .” and he thought he’d just stop by the office.
Under the guise of piety, the narrator betrays himself: He appears to live at the office, and many literary critics argue that Bartleby is a mirror reflection of the narrator.
The unattended self, unseen, rots and festers. The narrator must behold his real and abandoned self, and he can only process such agony by making himself believe Bartleby is another person, or by projecting his own rotted self onto another person.
We read, “Quite surprised, I called out, when to my consternation a key was turned from within, and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and—preferred not admitting me at present.”
Later we read that Bartleby is only in his undergarments and appears to be homeless as he has nowhere else to go.
I had a student, a genius math major from China, who told me she spent Christmas day alone in her door room doing math homework because doing math problems was all she knew how to do, ever since she was a little child.
Developing a myopic or tunnel-vision toward one’s work is a form of insanity and self-imposed slavery, and for the first time the narrator catches a glimpse of what has become of him.
For the first time, the narrator feels a kinship with Bartleby: “For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.”
Moreover, the narrator is convinced that “the scrivener was the victim of an innate and incurable disorder.”
Indeed, the narrator has uncovered a disease: his own.
What evidence is there that Bartleby is in fact the narrator’s alter ego or mirror image? (The homunculus within)
“I prefer not to,” is the narrator rebelling against his lifeless, routine existence. In other words, “I can’t do this crap anymore.”
The narrator’s shock is called Heimlich or the uncanny, a person who shows up is both strange but familiar.
The narrator begins to scrutinize Bartleby’s anti-social lifestyle, which is really his own: never going out for dinner, never going out at all.
He's going to church and he decides to visit Bartleby but has a vision of himself. “Both Bartleby and I were sons of Adam.” Yes, they’re brothers, the same person in fact.
By wanting to keep Bartleby employed and by wanting to help him, he really wants to heal himself.
He starts talking like Bartleby.
“Will you, or will you not, quite me?” Bartleby must stay to show the narrator the truth about himself.
“I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
The narrator’s career suggestions reflect his will to expand his own horizons.
The real condition of the narrator, dead, or not even born yet, feet curled up in the fetal position.
“Bartleby” Themes Part 2
Throwing Money at Bartleby Vs. Narrator’s Conscience
Two-thirds into the story, the narrator is desperate to get rid of Bartleby. He throws money at him, what he owes him, $12, and an additional $20. This is a classic tale of betrayal taken from the Bible: the part where Judas betrays Jesus for 20 pieces of silver.
Some things in life cannot be remedied with money. Some things in life take grueling work: self-improvement, confronting one’s fears, confronting one’s moral and spiritual deficits.
It would be nice if we could throw money at guilt and accountability and make those things go away, but we cannot.
The narrator’s conscience rises up and he hears a biblical commandment: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” The narrator feels compelled to charity, to let Bartleby stay in his office.
This could be the narrator's salvation. Deep down he knows his life is one of illusion and therefore a joke. He knows loving this helpless man will not only save Bartleby but himself. He can finally lose himself in a ideal greater than the lame American Success Myth.
The narrator persuades himself to believe that it is his mission to harbor Bartleby, to care and nurture him. This fate has been placed upon him.
But his charitable disposition is short-lived when customers complain about the unsightly Homeless Imp haunting the premises. His egotism won't allow his office--what amounts to his stage for the performance act that is his life--to be compromised by a stinky Homeless Imp. At the same time, in the depths of his soul the narrator knows that Bartleby is a bearer of truth and contains the only window of salvation available for him, so he is torn in his emotions toward Bartleby.
“I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
The above words are famous. The narrator’s conflicted state: to nurture his true self vs. his desire to flee from his festering, disintegrating soul and cover it up with a life of appearance.
He is resolved to expel Bartleby from his office, and proceeds, absurdly, to give Bartleby career advice. This is perhaps the most crazy part of the story. Imagine telling a catatonic depressive homeless imp to prepare his résumé for a robust job search. These jobs include a copier, a store clerk, a bartender, and an international travel companion.
Clearly, the narrator is mad to suggest such things.
Bartleby Removed to the Tombs.
We see that Bartleby won’t eat in the Tombs, a sort of prison for vagrants where he slowly starves to death. Our final image of him is coiled in the fetal position: Born a baby and dead like one.
He does not hunger for food as the narrator does. Food is not the answer for Bartleby. For the narrator, in contrast, food is love and approval, and he can never get enough of it.
Major Themes, Part 2:
- We reveal more truth about ourselves when we lie than when we’re honest.
- We can not measure morality or love toward others; it must be boundless. The fallacy of moral minimalism. The narrator tries to pay off Bartleby with a few silver coins.
- For every façade we try to convey to others, we cultivate its opposite, which will sooner or later come out and bite us: McMahon and the cool factor with the Caveman Scream.
- Even smart, morally decent people are capable of boundless self-delusions.
- When we can’t let go of our highly-regimented routines, they become prisons and eventually coffins inside of which we begin our slow death rot.
- We can believe our lives are full of purpose and conviction but in fact we’re just really good actors who’ve fooled not only others but ourselves.
- Analyze the "Safe" archetype.
- You can be a mindless consumer, a safe worker who lives by routine and facade, not conviction; or a noble slacker.
- Story reads as a dream of a man seeing his reflection: a depressed ghost of his former self.
- The narrator is a slave to the illusion of control; in fact, he is controlled by his need to control.
- Food becomes a substitute for human intimacy. Indeed, the narrator is more lonely than he can fathom and his hunger for intimacy and friendship is expressed in a needy obsession with food. The critic Dillingham also says his hunger for food is a hunger for self-approval.
- The narrator tries to purchase approval and goodness by paying off the homeless imp.
One: What type of image or façade is the narrator eager to convey to the reader? See first paragraph: He’s full of braggadocio and bluster. He’ a man of control, wisdom, and experience.
The narrator wants to divert us and call attention to Bartleby, but the real subject of the story is the narrator himself.
The narrator claims to be a man of conviction, yet as the story unfolds we see his is a doubt-ridden tormented soul disconnected from all convictions.
The narrator calls himself “unambitious” when in fact he loves image and success.
For example, he is a name-dropper.
The narrator calls himself a “safe” man. He wants you to believe he is wise and prudent, yet what he really means is he’s afraid of risks and lives in a cocoon where he is cut off from human love and connection.
“I seldom lose my temper” is a rationalization for being a coward.
“I was willing to overlook Turkey’s eccentricities” means he’s cowardly to enforce discipline and high work standards. He can’t fire anyone. He’s also afraid of change.
“With any other man . . .” The narrator is too scared to assert any real authority because he has no conviction.
Having no conviction, the narrator looks for approval from other employees.
He explains compassion keeps him from firing Bartleby but it’s really curiosity; he wants to know himself.
He boasts of attending Trinity Church, but this is a ruse, a show of piety. All evidence points to the very real possibility that the narrator lives in his office, even on Sundays.
His commandment to love his brother from the Bible is shallow because he betrays Bartleby when he realizes he is a detriment to his image before his clients.
The threat to his image compels narrator to take more aggressive actions. “Something severe must be done.” He decides to change offices.
The narrator’s denial of Bartleby three times is suggestive of the way Peter denied Christ three times.
Two: What evidence is there that Bartleby is in fact the narrator’s alter ego or mirror image? The homunculus within.
“I prefer not to,” is the narrator rebelling against his lifeless, routine existence. In other words, “I can’t do this crap anymore.”
The narrator’s shock is called Heimlich or the uncanny, a person who shows up is both strange but familiar.
The narrator begins to scrutinize Bartleby’s anti-social lifestyle, which is really his own: never going out for dinner, never going out at all.
He's going to church and he decides to visit Bartleby but has a vision of himself. “Both Bartleby and I were sons of Adam.” Yes, they’re brothers, the same person in fact.
By wanting to keep Bartleby employed and by wanting to help him, he really wants to heal himself.
He starts talking like Bartleby.
“Will you, or will you not, quite me?” Bartleby must stay to show the narrator the truth about himself.
“I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
The narrator’s career suggestions reflect his will to expand his own horizons.
The real condition of the narrator, dead, or not even born yet, feet curled up in the fetal position.
Three: What is the role of food in the story? Hunger, love, approval.
The great Melville critic William B. Dillingham observes with great insight that the story’s narrator has a preoccupation with food and that he seeks food as compensation for the self-approval and validation he constantly lacks.
Not surprisingly, then, the narrator’s three employees have “food names”: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut.
The narrator is preoccupied with what his employees are eating, cake and apples, spicy treats of all kinds.
The narrator uses figurative language of gorging and consuming as a way of working.
The narrator is preoccupied with other people’s digestion in the same way I want everyone in my family to eat lots of fiber.
The notices Bartleby, a bland man, craves spice, and only eats ginger cookies.
See what page, I don’t know, but narrator is looking for a “morsel of approval” by doing good deeds.
Four. What evidence is there that everything the narrator says is the opposite of the truth? For example, when he says he “has been filled with the profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.” What does that mean on various levels?
The earlier we see the narrator as a duplicitous coward the better. He has a core of decency, but he has allowed his work to take over his life. He has escaped his higher responsibilities to self and community by mastering his work while allowing his real self to wither away.
In truth, he is a man with no “profound conviction” but is “running scared,” conforming to society’s definition of success based on appearances, hard work, and money.
On an unconscious level, he knows his life is a colossal failure, but he has devoted his life to concealing this fact from others and himself. He reminds us of a famous quote from Blaise Pascal.
Pascal Pensées 806
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.”
Pascal is observing how we devote more energy to putting up a façade, and all this energy constructs this exterior life while the real life inside rots and withers away. Perhaps we can read the story as a fever dream in which Bartleby is the true dying self of the narrator.
Without conviction, the narrator relies on the approval of others to legitimize his existence. His reliance makes him needy and desperate. No amount of fake success can fill the emptiness, loneliness, neediness, and despair that define his existence.
He is a tragic man because he has no conviction of a core self; rather, his identity is that of a myth: The Myth of the Hard-Working American whose financial success and social rank give him a sense of authority, wisdom, and wellbeing. In fact, as the story continues, we realize the narrator has no authority, wisdom, or wellbeing, but fear, fallacy, and despair.
The narrator’s downward descent is a classic case of impoverishment through substitution, the feeble attempt to replace basic human needs—belonging, connection, love, and intimacy—with cheap substitutes—consumerism, binge eating, or any addiction.
What makes the narrator all the more tragic is that he is a learned man with a high degree of literacy and critical thinking skills; however, his pathology, being absorbed by the Myth, prevents him from applying his critical thinking skills to his own life. Therefore, his education is worthless.
Intelligence, learnedness, and education are all worthless if we don’t have the metacognition to change our lives. The narrator can see the trees of his existence, but he can’t see the forest. His lack of metacognition is so extreme that he is a condition of madness.
One of the story’s themes is that when we embrace a Myth with complete abandon, we lose our metacognition and critical thinking and descend into madness.
Five. How do the employees’ names seem less realistic and more comic and dream-like?
It appears Turkey, a man close to sixty, is a raging alcoholic evidenced by his face “of a fine florid hue.” We also read, “it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals.” His work is prone to sloppiness, and he smells like a homeless person, but the narrator tolerates Turkey’s flaws, apparently too set in his ways to fire Turkey for his reckless drinking and malodorous clothing. The narrator rationalizes that Turkey is competent and productive till 12:00 P.M. and he seems content with a half-day’s good work. Additionally, the narrator claims to have empathy for Turkey since they are both the same age.
More likely, however, the narrator fears a confrontation with Turkey, evidencing the narrator’s cowardice and lack of control.
Turkey’s volatile behavior is too extreme to be realistic. Rather, he a parody figure worthy of a comedy TV show or an absurd dream. I believe in fact the story is best read as a dream with an allegorical message rather than some realistic study.
Nippers looks like a 25-year-old pirate. He suffers from ambition and indigestion, the “two evil powers” that rule him.
He grinds his teeth and hisses rather than speak. Nippers can never balance his table in spite of constantly putting chips beneath the legs.
We read that Nippers makes extra money by doing side jobs that may be a conflict of interest with the narrator’s business, but the narrator tolerates Nippers’ extracurricular activities, he claims, because Nippers is valuable to him. In fact, the narrator exploits these two eccentric employees and has made a calculation that their faults are compensated by the degree to which the narrator can exploit them. Of course, the narrator would have us believe otherwise, that it is the narrator’s fair-minded prudence and sense of compassion that compels him to keep the employees.
Indeed, we read again and again that the narrator refers to his employees as being “valuable,” reduced to monetary units.
At one point, the narrator gives Turkey a new coat, but Turkey perceives this gift as an insult and is overcome with “insolent” outrage.
Nippers is also a drinker. His drink of choice is brandy, and he suffers from alcohol-fueled tantrums when trying to balance his table.
Again, Nipper’s existence, like Turkey’s, is too farcical to be realistic and lends itself to parody or someone’s fever dream.
Ginger Nut is a twelve-year-old errand boy whose father, a hard laborer, wants his son to be spared his father’s dreadful fate. However, by the looks of the office, office work isn’t much of an improvement; rather, it is its own sort of hell on earth.
Regarding his employees, we see that the narrator spends a great deal of time observing and chronicling their eating and drinking activities: various seltzers, nut mixes, spicy cakes, and apples.
Even as the narrator observes the Bartleby’s initial hard work, he writes, “There was no pause for digestion.”
Six. Discuss the theme of workaholism in the story.
Using money and social rank as metrics for wellbeing becomes a vicious cycle and a no-win game with final goal. The workaholic addiction is self-feeding: The more one concentrates on the job the less one has a parallel life outside the office to create a balance. Without this balance, the worker tries even harder to compensate for the lack of a connected self (connected to family and friends) by connecting with work. But work connections are limited to the objectives of the jobsite: money and social rank.
Notice the narrator never makes mention of home life or of a wife or of any friends. By neglecting to give us any information about his life outside the office, we can assume the office is his entire life: It is the cesspool that consumes every fiber of his being.
The arrival of Bartleby, who answers the narrator’s ad for help, further illustrates the theme of workaholism.
The image of Bartleby, if looked at as if through the narrator’s dream, is a metaphorical image of the narrator himself: “I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!”
If the physical narrator is plump from the comforts of his high income, his spirit—embodied by Bartleby, is the spirit of a forlorn, emaciated homunculus.
The narrator makes Bartleby work in a hideous prison, a sort of squalid dungeon, which only the most unfeeling boss would assign. Soon enough, Bartleby will begin to waste away in work conditions so brutal that Nippers and Turkey can only tolerate it with the help of alcohol.
Not everyone interprets the story this way. This interpretation is my inclination, and that of other critics as well. We can call this the Bartleby Alter Ego Interpretation. Such an interpretation tends to see the story more as an allegorical dream.
Take, for example, the part in which the narrator describes Bartleby as never leaving the office: “I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed, that he never went anywhere. As yet I had never, of my personal knowledge, known him to be outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner.” His diet is ginger-nuts. This “hot and spicy” cookie fails to compensate for the insipid, bland existence that defines the narrator’s. In many ways, this mirrors the narrator’s existence.
Initially, Bartleby works like the workaholic the narrator is, “copying by sunlight and candle-light.”
But after three days in this allegorical dream of a story, Bartleby appears to suffer job burnout, lethargy, ennui, depression, and stubborn defiance. The narrator is shocked that after giving an order Bartleby does not respond with “instant compliance”; rather, the emaciated homunculus responds in a calm voice: “I prefer not to.”
The narrator is stunned. He repeats his order and Bartleby again says, “I would prefer not to.”
Seven. Seeing himself as dead is, ironically, a moment of hope and the part of the story where the narrator feels deeply connected to Bartleby. Why?
We tend to resist change unless we have a radical, subversive force that opens the gates to us and points us to a higher realm. Many men, for example, remain animals and troglodytes until the “right woman” transforms them into a Romantic Gentleman.
In the same way, the narrator has been dead so long he no longer knows he is dead. He lives in a state of prolonged ignorance, what in Arabic is called the Jahiliyyah.
Bartleby has “strangely disarmed” the narrator. As we read, “But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me.”
The possibility of rejecting society’s script and no longer conforming to a life that is slowly killing the narrator floods him with both hope and fear. He’s hopeful that there may be a better life than the lonely one he leads, but he’s also fearful of it, because such a life represents the Unknown.
As we read from the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard: “Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit.”
But the narrator squanders his opportunity to see the abject futility of his existence and instead tries to “save” or “help” Bartleby in order that he can “purchase a delicious self-approval.” The narrator appears to want to feel good about himself and he thinks tolerating Bartleby’s noncompliance should be an easy ticket to proving his charity and self-worth.
The narrator is a selfish man who is looking to appear good “on the cheap.” As he writes, “To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.”
But his intentions are contaminated, and he admits to the “evil impulse” to goad Bartleby so he can test his subordinate’s compliance.
Eight. How is Bartleby the narrator’s ghost who’s come to haunt him like the ghosts in Scrooge?
The narrator says of Bartleby: “he was always there” and this perhaps evidences the mirror effect: The narrator sees himself and on an unconscious level he identifies and pities Bartleby, this lonely, isolated homunculus with no life being eaten away by the prison of work without love and intimacy.
On the other hand, Bartleby’s rebellion against being told what to do is completely unearthly and shocking to the narrator who conforms to society’s script of success. While the narrator does his best to impress us with his self-assured control and worldly success, he inadvertently reveals himself to be a lost, volatile, lonely, petty man. The longer his ghost doppelganger (double) remains in his office the more he must see the true nature of his failed self.
As the ghost stays in the office, he keeps his calm; on the other hand, while the narrator must co-exist with Bartleby, he grows more and more tormented by agitation. This agitation consumes him, for remember, the narrator desires nothing more than a clear conscience. Bartleby does not allow that.
The more we see the narrator in the throes of mental torment the more we begin to see that he may be completely mad. For example, the narrator claims he was on his way to Trinity Church and just happened to drop in at the office. Perhaps it’s more likely that he goes to the office on Sundays, but he’s trying to obscure this fact by saying he was on his way to church.
On the Sunday in question, he spies on Bartleby and sees himself: in a stated of “tattered deshabille,” shabbily dressed and in general consumed by his never-ending work. We further read this description: “Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired.”
The narrator feels emasculated in Bartleby’s presence: “Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises.”
The narrator sees that Bartleby eats merely for fuel so he can be a slave of his ongoing work. He fuels himself on cheese and ginger-nuts. He is a cog in the machine, a reflection of the narrator’s failed, moribund existence. The narrator is even worse than Bartleby because the narrator’s slavery is self-induced and self-chosen, and here lies the story’s tragedy: A man chooses to live a life of death and slavery because he is afraid of life.
The story must act as a sort of comedy, like 30 Rock or The Office, because the narrator’s self-importance and pretentiousness is being deflated by the mockery of the imp Bartleby.
Often, the narrator’s descriptions of Bartleby seem like a description of his own depressed, bereft existence:
“Yes, 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, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”
This vision of himself overcomes the narrator with sadness:
“For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.”
The narrator takes a look at Bartleby’s desk and its contents and does an inventory of Bartleby’s life, which may be like that of his own. He contemplates the window looking out at the “dead brick wall,” a tomb-like image to house the dead, and not unlike the cubicles that many employees find themselves trapped in working for corporate America as “they live the dream.”
Nine. Does the narrator heed the ghost’s warning about his own death?
The short answer is no. Rather than look at his own pathology and mental illness evidenced by his workaholic compulsion, the narrator attempts to convince himself that Bartleby is the one who is sick: “What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.”
Sadly, it may be the narrator’s own soul that he cannot reach because the narrator is to invested in the American Success Myth to let go of it.
Bartleby is not sick because his sickness is a natural reaction to an even sicker work environment that treats its workers like cogs in a machine.
We should all be hard workers and take pride in the conviction, integrity, and professionalism that we bear at our job, but our work effort has to be within reason. Not having a life outside work, like the narrator, is unreasonable.
Because the narrator has convinced himself that it is Bartleby, and not him and his extended work environment, that is mentally ill, all of the narrator’s efforts to “help” Bartleby are rooted in falseness. Of course, the narrator will see himself as engaging in Christian charity, but this is a smokescreen for a man who is fortifying his mentally ill fortress of the American Success Myth.
The narrator is not real with Bartleby at this point in the story; rather, he is patronizing and phony in his charitable attitude.
Ten. How does the narrator’s agitation become more acute after his so-called conversion for feeling empathy for Bartleby?
In spite of saying there is a “bond of humanity” between them, the narrator fights for his job site territory and defends the idea that he is sane by mocking Bartleby. He encourages Nippers and Turkey to join in the mockery by mimicking Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to.”
It appears the narrator is becoming more and more unhinged, which is to say, emotionally dislocated. All the while, Bartleby remains calm and the narrator notices that his subordinate does “nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery.” Deep down, I suspect the narrator admires Bartleby who knows himself and has a core to his being; in contrast, the narrator is anxious and fearful and has no real self-knowledge.
Bartleby even stops writing and we hear him speak beyond his mantra when the narrator asks him why he has stopped writing: “Do you not see the reason for yourself?”
The narrator tries to maintain his façade of calm even as he descends into anxiety-stricken madness: “I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness.” That is a comically colossal understatement. Bartleby does not “occasion” the narrator “uneasiness.” Bartleby has gone deep inside the narrator’s brain, turned into the narrator’s obsession, and ruptured the very feeble foundation of the narrator’s being.
Wanting this reminder of his failed life gone from his existence and embarrassed by his presence in his office, the narrator is desperate to be rid of Bartleby, so he attempts to terminate him. His attempt is seen as Judas of Iscariot, the biblical story of betrayal, by the narrator’s offering of sixpences and shillings to Bartleby.
As the narrator obsesses over Bartleby’s possible leaving, he converses with himself, making a wager over whether or not Bartleby will be gone from the office. Clearly, the narrator has descended another tier into madness.
When Bartleby is still in the office, the narrator admits the power this homunculus has over him: “But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of-perplexity.”
The narrator’s ego is hurt as he contemplates that this is unacceptable: “permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me—this, too, I could not think of.”
Ten. What evidences the narrator’s deepening madness in the aftermath of Bartleby refusing to quit?
The narrator now makes reference to a murder, that of Samuel Adams at the hands of John C. Colt, and appears to be referring to his own murderous desires. The narrator is getting more and more unhinged. His falling apart is really the only plot line of the story. A character going more and more mad is part of the comedic formula we see in much television, which is why many consider the story to be a precursor in many ways of the comic TV show.
Rather than confront his crisis as an opportunity to take a work break and rehabilitate, the narrator is resolved, foolishly, to work even harder: “I endeavored, also, immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to comfort my despondency.”
As his obsession deepens, he begins to contemplate that Bartleby was thrust upon him by fate or destiny, forces beyond the narrator’s control.
The narrator is further vexed by the people who go into the office and observe the silent homunculus. These observations are bad for the narrator’s image, a façade that he has invested much in to impress the world.
Whatever compassion the narrator may or may not have for Bartleby, it’s clear he has more invested in his work image than he does in showing compassion for people, including himself.
His desperation to be rid of Bartleby is so great that he moves his office to another location. He has the furniture removed. He abandons Bartleby.
At this point, we see the narrator’s ambivalence toward Bartleby, as a source of anguish and hope: “I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
When a lawyer approaches the narrator at his new law office and makes inquiries about the silent homunculus, the narrator feigns ignorance in an attempt to abnegate any responsibility for the mysterious imp.
After a week or so, a landlord of the old building visits the narrator and charges responsibility to the narrator for Bartleby’s removal.
Eleven. What is the irony concerning the conversation about the narrator’s five career recommendations?
“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?” |
197 |
“No; I would prefer not to make any change.” |
198 |
“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?” |
199 |
“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.” |
200 |
“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!” |
201 |
“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once. |
202 |
“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.” |
203 |
“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.” |
204 |
His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. |
205 |
“Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.” |
206 |
“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.” |
207 |
“How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?” |
208 |
“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.” |
209 |
“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—one which had not been wholly unindulged before. |
210 |
“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my office, but my dwelling—and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.” |
211 |
“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.” Irony in the Above Exchange The irony is that Bartleby appears isolated and enslaved by his immobility, but he is a free man, true to himself. In contrast, the narrator is a successful American businessman who is a slave to his fear, and yet it is the narrator who feels compelled to give Bartleby advice when it should be the other way around. Twelve. How does the narrator’s conversation with the grub-man reveal the narrator’s true nature? After the narrator pays the grub-man to care for Bartleby (no doubt guilt-induced), the grub-man asks the narrator if he knows a notorious forger. The narrator denies knowing any forgers, but in fact his entire existence is a colossal forgery. As William Dillingham points out with keen insight, the narrator is right that he does not know a forger because he is too ignorant of his true self—his true, counterfeit, forging self—to even know that he does in fact know one. Bartleby’s death is a silent protest to the American Success Myth, and all its vanity and forgery, embodied by the story’s narrator. |
212 |
Sentence Fragments
No main verb
Fragment
An essay with a clear thesis and organization.
Corrected
An essay with a clear thesis and organization has a stronger probability of succeeding.
Fragment
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests
Corrected
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests will inevitably discriminate against non-native speakers.
No main subject
Fragment
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students
Corrected
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students, No Child Left Behind remains a form of discrimination.
Fragment
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese
Correct
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese, they fell apart upon the first bite.
Fragment
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos
Correct
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos, your tacos will fall apart.
Examples of Student Fragments
People are never happy with what they have. Always trying to be something they're not.
Star Trek predicted what the future would be like. A world where an abundant supply of technology helps the human race.
Since being drawn to social media, we're together now more than ever. Not communicating with conversation but only connecting.
Don’t allow gerunds and participles to stand alone.
Having Facebook friends whose GoFundMe accounts that are always asking for money.
Babbling about the Presidential election.
Stuffing my mouth with cream cheese and bagels.
Examining the reasons for staying in college.
Running toward the buffet table.
Running toward the buffet table is dangerous. (gerund noun phrase)
Running toward the buffet table, Mo tripped and broke his wrist. (participle phrase modifies Mo, so it’s also called an adjective phrase)
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese.
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese can lead to a heart attack. (gerund noun phrase)
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese, Augustine was oblivious of his girlfriend who sat across from him at the table looking at his exhibition of gluttony with horror and disgust. (participle phrase that modifies Augustine).
Augustine dreams of eating a ricotta pound cake smothered with whipped cream and strawberries. (gerund noun phrase is the object of the sentence)
Faulty
Elliot was a vulgar philistine. Evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.
Corrected
Elliot was a vulgar philistine evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.
Don’t let prepositional phrases stand alone.
A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition.
Under the bridge, the Red Hot Chili Peppers rock star contemplated the emptiness of his life and wrote “Under the Bridge.”
In "Growing Up Tethered" by Sherry Turkle is talking about why more teens are more focused on their phones than real people.
In the above, get rid of the preposition "In."
Faulty
I enjoyed my run. In spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain. (prepositional phrase can’t stand alone)
Corrected
I enjoyed my run in spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain.
Don’t let an appositional phrase stand alone.
An appositional phrase is a the use of phrase to rename a noun.
My father, a military man, speaks in a loud, bombastic voice.
I listen to the loud voice of my father, a military man.
Faulty
Bo Jackson, the most freakish physical specimen of the last century, suffered a career-stopping hip injury. That sent his fans into mourning.
Corrected
Bo Jackson, the most freakish physical specimen of the last century, suffered a career-stopping hip injury, which sent his fans into mourning.
Faulty
My favorite athlete is Bo Jackson. The most freakish specimen of the last century.
Corrected
My favorite athlete is Bo Jackson, the most freakish specimen of the last century.
Faulty
I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350. One of the greatest cars ever built.
Corrected
I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350, one of the greatest cars ever built.
Faulty
In 1969, I swooned over my third grade classmate Patty Wilson. A pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.
Corrected
In 1969, I swooned over my third grade classmate Patty Wilson, a pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.
Don’t let an infinitive phrase stand alone. An infinitive phrase is a “to verb,” which is not a real verb.
To know me is to love me.
Faulty
Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt. To see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.
Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt to see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.
Don’t let an adjective clause stand alone.
An adjective clause is that or which followed by a subject and a verb.
I like cars that feel like they’ve been built with care and precision.
Spotify, which I joined last year, has kept me from spending money on iTunes.
Faulty
I spend most of my listening time on Spotify. Which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.
Corrected
I spend most of my listening time on Spotify, which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.
Faulty
People who lard their salads with candied nuts.
Corrected
People who lard their salads with candied nuts have to admit they can only eat salad if they make it taste like pecan pie.
Faulty
People who cut you off and then drive really slowly as if they're trying to enrage you on purpose.
Corrected
People who cut you off and then drive really slowly as if they're trying to enrage you on purpose are passive-aggressive miscreants.
Faulty
People who sign up for community college classes and then ignore the syllabus.
Corrected
People who sign up for community college classes and then ignore the syllabus are more in love with the idea of going to college than actually going to college.
Faulty
People who think marriage will cure them of their immaturity and give them instant status as winners in society.
Corrected
People who think marriage will cure them of their immaturity and give them instant status as winners in society are delusional charlatans who are on the road to divorce.
Don’t let an adverbial clause stand alone.
An adverbial clause modifies a verb.
I like to do my kettlebell workouts when my twins are in school.
When it’s too hot to exercise, I slog through my kettlebell workouts.
Faulty
I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream. As a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”
Corrected
I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream as a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”
Don’t let any long phrase or clause be confused with a complete sentence.
Faulty
Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures.
Corrected
Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures, I feel I didn’t retain much information during my two-year stay there.
Find Fragments and Comma Splices
The other night I consumed a tub of Greek yogurt with peanut butter and honey so I'd have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.
I wasn't really hungry, I was anxious. Whenever I get anxious; which is all the time, I eat like a demon.
Anxiety propels me to stuff my face even when I’m not hungry. The mechanical act of eating. Using my greedy hands to lift food to my mouth and then hearing my mandibles and molars crunch the food matter into mush, has a soothing effect on my anxieties—like giving a teething biscuit to a baby.
Anxiety compels me to engage in the practice of “preemptive eating.” The idea that even though I’m not hungry in this moment, I might be “on the road” inside my car far away from nutritional resources so I had better fill up while I can. In truth, I’m not “on the road” that often evidenced by the fact that my nine-year-old car has only 33 thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly, then, my impulse for preemptive eating is indefensible.
But you see, my anxieties exaggerate the circumstances, so that I have ample food reserves in my car—cases of high-protein chocolate peanut butter bars and a case of bottled water. All that unnecessary weight in the trunk compromises my gas mileage, but my anxieties are a cruel tyrant.
Anxiety is the reason that, in spite of my hardcore kettlebell workouts, I am a good twenty pounds overweight. Being twenty pounds overweight makes me anxious, and these anxieties in turn make me want to eat more.
Contemplating this vicious cycle is making me extremely anxious.
Good food makes me anxious.
Just thinking about good food can make me so anxious I’ll obsess over it in bed, so I’ll toss and turn all night. Like a heroin addict.
When I was in my early twenties, I ate donuts that were so good I wanted to drop out of college, give up on relationships, and hole myself up in my mother’s basement. Where I’d spend the rest of my life eating donuts.
I suffer from food insomnia. Meaning that fixating at night on a certain delicious meal I once had can prevent me from falling asleep.
There’s one food in particular that keeps me up at night—chocolate brownies.
Chocolate brownies are the best delivery system for sending an explosion of chocolate into the brain’s pleasure centers. Chocolate brownies saturate my brain with so much dopamine that after eating a brownie platter it’s not safe for me to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment. When I was a kid, I took cough medicine laced with codeine, and there was a warning label on the back: “Not safe to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment.” Chocolate brownie mix should have the same warning on the back of the box.
The best brownies mix I’ve ever had are Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies from Costco. I’ve purchased the same brand from other stores, but the Costco version is the best. Costco apparently uses its special powers to have Ghirardelli make an exclusive proprietary formula that is far superior to other versions, this fact has been corroborated by conversations I’ve had with Orange County housewives.
I don’t live in Orange County, and I don’t normally have conversations with housewives. That I talked with them about the superior quality of the exclusive Costco version of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies mix attests to the severity of my unhealthy dependence on food.
Costco does a good job of making you think about food. Before you even walk inside Costco, you smell the freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and cream Danish. The smell makes you run inside the store.
Chronologically speaking, I am supposed to be an adult, but like a kid I’m running toward the Costco entrance while pushing an empty shopping cart. I must be a scary sight. This 240-pound middle-aged bald guy aggressively pushing his battering ram into a giant food larder. Where he will pillage the spoils. I’m like an Old Testament warlord about to ransack a defeated city.
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
While the narrator in “Bartleby” lacks the mean-spirited vindictiveness of the classic narcissist, he does conform to narcissism’s other characteristics cogently analyzed in Kristin Dombek’s essay “Emptiness.” The narrator’s narcissism becomes evident in light of Dombek’s keen definition when we see that behind all his frenetic verbalizing and posturing is a man consumed by the emptiness of his own soul, which results in an insatiable appetite. He is a man whose life is devoted to the façade of “selfiness,” what Dombek describes as the “simulacrum of the superpowered self.” And finally, he is man who can only associate himself with those who help bolster his life stage as a performance of artist for The American Dream of Success, which is why he is so threatened by the appearance of Bartleby.
Sample #2
While on the surface the narrator in “Bartleby” appears to conform in many ways to Kristen Dombek’s pithy essay “Emptiness” and while he does indeed show a certain narcissism in some of his self-aggrandizing actions, he lacks something fundamental to narcissists: guilt. The story bleeds with the narrator’s guilt and shame throughout, and these emotions are antithetical to narcissism. Whereas the narcissist is single-minded in his pursuit of grandiose “selfiness,” the narrator is a divided soul who is torn by his personal comfort and his Christian obligation to help the Homeless Imp resulting in his unbearable guilt. Whereas the narcissist is single-minded in his pursuit of the perfect stage to conduct his performance, the myopic narrator compromises his stage by living in a condition of squalor that contradicts his grandiose description of his workplace, which speaks to the shame he experiences for a life of self-betrayal. And finally, while the narcissist is single-minded in his association with only those who, as Dombek observes, help the narcissist maintain his illusion of “selfiness,” the narrator co-exists with a bunch of ragtag idiots as his underlings who compromise his “simulacrum of the superpowered self.” This work arrangement speaks to the narrator’s cowardice and general dysfunction, which surely afflict him with shame and self-loathing. To conclude, the narrator is too much of a guilt-ridden coward to be the smarmy sociopathic narcissist described in Dombek’s masterful essay.
Thesis Sample #3:
I will concede that the narrator in “Bartleby” has almost too much of a soul to be a classic narcissist. I will further concede that the narrator is soaked with guilt, shame, and self-loathing, characteristics we don’t associate with the classic sociopathic narcissist. But let us not take our eye off the ball: The narrator is in many ways a virulent narcissist and he embodies many of the grotesque qualities discussed in Kristin Dombek’s lively essay “Emptiness.” He is clearly more interested in promoting the appearance of being charitable toward Bartleby rather than being genuinely charitable. He is clearly more interested in promoting the appearance of being prudent, self-possessed, and wise than in actually having those qualities. He is clearly more interested in curating his entire life as one of success, on other people’s terms, than finding success on his own terms. And finally, like all narcissists, the narrator is clearly driven by an unrelenting appetite for other people’s approval, which belies his own chronic emptiness.
Sample Introduction That Transitions to a Thesis
In the age of social media, we curate our own lives. A curator is a guide who controls the message. He is the custodian of his own self-image. Indeed, in the age of social media we curate our own lives, often emphasizing that which makes us look successful and desirable and concealing that which makes puts us in a less flattering light. The danger of being our own curator is that we begin to believe in our own BS. For the last two decades, I’ve curated myself as an intellectual, one who passionately engages in my three loves, reading, writing, and piano playing, but I’ve recently had an awakening in which I realized that thousands of hours lazily spent on the Internet have compromised my intellectual life rendering me somewhat of a fraud to others and myself. My awakening is partly the result of four books: So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter. I am not alone in realizing I’ve squandered thousands of hours engaging in mindless clicking before an Internet screen. My friend, who is far more brilliant than I am, described his wasted existence in the following email:
Like you, I got lost and wasted tens of thousands of hours on the internet. I'm wondering when I reached my 10,000 hours of internet mastery? If I started regular use around 1995, and I averaged at least a few hours a day (which increased over the years to a current and embarrassing 8+/day...my job allows me to spend half or so of the eight-hour shift on the internet, then I'm on a few hours at night), I'm guessing I achieved Internet Mastery by about 2000 or so. I've probably logged 50,000 hours or so by now...which means I could have mastered five different art forms by now. What a tragic waste.
My friend and I both agreed that we’re going to drastically cut down our Internet use and devote ourselves to “deep work,” defined by Cal Newport as prolonged periods of mental discomfort resulting from giving singular concentration to one’s craft. We can only make this change because our self-curated image as “intellectuals” has proven to be a false one in the face of our wasted Internet time. Hopefully, we will change and no longer be curators of a lie.
Sadly, the Great Curator of BS Himself, the narrator of “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” is doomed to a life of stagnation and moral decrepitude because he embodies the recalcitrant characteristics of a narcissist discussed in Kristin Dombeck’s essay “Emptiness” evidenced by __________________________, ______________________________, ___________________________, and ____________________________________.
4 Questions We Must Ask About Our Introduction:
One. Is it authentic?
Two. Is it compelling and hook the reader? (sometimes we have to be personal and gut-wrenching)
Three. Is it relevant to our thesis?
Four. Does it transition to our thesis?
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