Customer Reviews

Billy Budd...and Other Tales (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

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Herman Melville's "Bartleby" is undoubtedly one of the finest short stories known in the canon of Western literature. It is the story of a stubborn, yet ultimately passive scrivner (copyist) that despite his individuality has alienated himself from society. Melville contemplates whether a true individual can really function or even survive in society.

This story, while delightful and original, can get bogged down in the rigid, almost archaic English. Some readers will be ultimately find this too cumbersome and but the book down. However, many readers will grow accustomed to the language and, it is charming. If you haven't read Melville or think that he might be too stuffy, or too distant, think again. His humor and his originality are to be appreciated and maybe even admired in this hum-drum age of tired sitcoms.

Melville's darkly curious novella about a mysterious new hire
who refuses to leave his place of employment--even when dismissed--is subtly compelling; the conflict is revealed
gradually in small, psychological increments. This story, which could just as well have been set in Victorian London, is related by an elderly narrator--a lawyer with two regular scriveners (legal copyists) and an office boy. But the addition of the inscrutable, pallid Bartleby creates a sensation in the small office. He quietly but simply refuses to do anything but copy documents, eventually disintegrating to not even that. Yet he will not leave; he "prefers not" to do anything but waste time and waste away. How can his decent, compassionate employer remove the unwanted fellow, without resorting to crass police intervention?

Melville's unchaptered tale is characterized by with long paragraphs and a rich tapestry of vocabulary. Less a mystery than one at first expects, the simple plot unfolds eventually to comment on the role of humanity. How easy it would be to assuage our collective conscience by institutionalizing the misfits. This may be the first literary example of Passive Resistance. With no clear cut villain in this seemingly actionless tale, readers are left in moral disquiet, yet this short work provides a glimpse into Melville's dark genius.