Entry 3

“Bartleby, The Scrivener”

   “Bartleby, The Scrivener” is a short story written by Herman Melville.

     Bartleby is one of Melville’s most debated short stories. It has been discussed by many critics throughout the years but there is not one correct answer or interpretation. We can only point out the possible interpretations there can be and understand Bartleby through our own reading. Much of this is due to the fact that we know so little about the character. At the same time we know how much “he prefers not to”, which is perhaps, the key to try to understand him.

     The only thing we know about Bartleby is that he had worked in a “dead letter office”. Perhaps he thought that job was meaningful or perhaps he read some letters. Reading letters, which he knew would never be delivered, might have made an impact on him – the fragile and mortal side of life and people.

    This short story is marked by the power of saying “no”, the power of choice, the idea of resistence but also about how deeply can someone be affected by life and society. Bartleby is depicted as “forlorn”, “pale” and reserved. Melville’s description of the surrounding walls is a clue to understand Bartleby’s mind. In my opinion, he was tired of life. He saw the walls growing around him as if we was being “boxed in”. This can be interpreted along with the subtitle “A Wall Street Story” – the rise of a commercial society and of dehumanizing labour which Bartleby did not want be part of. He died to prove the strength of his will and died alone, immersed in is individuality, his willingness but at the same time with the weight of the world crushing him down.

I will try to answer three of the questions that are in the study guide in this site: http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/

·         What do you think of the lawyer’s treatment of Bartleby? Is it commendable? Deplorable? Understandable? Or something else? Is there anything else the lawyer should have done? How would you act if you were in the lawyer’s place?

The first thing I thought was that no boss would tolerate such an attitude, especially nowadays. But the narrator also had a funny personality, in the sense that he wanted to be supportive and understanding, more to feel good about himself, than anything else. Due to Bartleby’s emotionless manner, I find it difficult to see how the narrator could help him or react in a different way.

The narrator points out frequently how disarmed he felt towards B. behavior. I think this is interesting. I often think about people who are so direct and confident that we do not know how to react towards them. For example, if a person, who does nothing wrong, who does his job perfectly well, but at the same times looks fragile and lonely and yet has the “courage” to say “he prefers not to” with such calmness and willfulness we are then surprised by their courage. Or we explode with that person or we just don’t know what to say and how to react because often that person is doing so because he has a reason, we just don’t know what reason is it. This is the reason why the narrator felt disarmed and did not react towards Bartleby.what disarmed the narrator and that is why he took so long to react towards B.

·         Why does Bartleby “prefer not to” perform more and more actions throughout the story? Does this say more about the nature of the work or more about the state of his soul?

I believe that Bartleby is not only making a social statement. I believe that he is in a very fragile state of mind but he has the strength to hold on to his individuality, which is probably all that he has. We should keep in mind that he always said “no” as a preference - he did not just answer the narrator with a straight “no”, which would have changed the entire meaning of the story, but rather that he “preferred” not to. This might state the power of having a choice and he prefers not to. I think this is a clear evidence about our freedom of choice and our willfulness in refusing something. The difficulty here is to find out what moves Bartleby.

     The fact that he works nonstop in the beginning and that the narrator points out how much he admires his good service (although his manner is rather strange), gives me the idea that he wants to say that he can do the job very well, without any difficulty and with the utmost efficiency but because the work is so automatic and non-creative he starts doing less and less in the office. Here we can see the social message (which has, of course, an implicit personal side to it). Nobody forced B. to be a scrivener and perhaps we can assume that he knew what the job would be like. So I am really starting to think that he wanted to prove something but in a rather odd way. It seemed odd that he kept saying “no” but did not actually do anything, meaning he did not rebel against something in a practical matter and in the end he just dies. Maybe just saying “no” was rebellious enough. On the other hand, I can understand why there are critics who say that he might have been a troubled person. Maybe he took individuality to the extreme.

What do you make of his “profound conviction” that the easiest life is the best? Do

you share this conviction?

Like many, the layer prefers security above all. He prefers to have “prudence” and “method”. Personally, I do think that prudence can be a good quality and a bad one. Perhaps that is way Melville presented us such opposed personalities (lawyer and Bartleby). Bartleby proved not to be so prudent or even “a safe men”, but he had something that his boss did not have: courage and the will “to take the road not taken”, the road only few take. Personally, the easiest way of life often doesn’t fill my soul. I discovered that fighting for something tastes much better than when things are too easy accomplished. I understood that accepting is not always something to be proud about and throughout my life I understood how difficult saying “No” is and at the same time how necessary it is.

To conclude, the lawyer is touched by Bartleby’s death. I think that he understood that it takes a lot to be a Bartleby but at the same time, due to his personality, he does not feel bad for leading the life he did and by thinking that life should be easy. 

Entry 2

Nathaniel Hawthorne

       I had already heard about Nathaniel’s Hawthorne book “The Scarlett Letter”. I actually bought it because I intend to read it quite soon. But I knew very little about the author and after the class I went to look up on him a bit further. What caught my attention and made me do some research as soon as I got home was a small detail mentioned by our teacher: that he had changed is name (added the “w”) because of his ancestry, probably to distance himself from it. It is said that it might have been because of his uncle, John Hathorne, who was one of the judges in the Salem trials, the only one who never repented of his actions.

      I never thought that I would finally hear about the Salem witch trials at University, even if we aren’t going to study it in detail. But I did my personal research and of course everything connects to everything else – the Calvinist and puritan religious context of the time. I actually learnt that in Salem village things were pretty harsh because of these religious fanatics of the time. Villagers could not celebrate Easter and Christmas because they said it had roots in paganism (which is also something that interests me since I heard about Wicca), they had to attend to the meeting house for a three hour sermon twice a week, and toys were almost forbidden, specially dolls because they were regarded as a pure waste of one’s time.

      Reading this made me think that no society or community is perfect. All of them have their faults and what keeps surprising me every time through this learning process is the power of the church and the power of faith – how it helped people and how it devastated them.

      But know I want to focus on the Maypole of Merry-Mount which was highly interesting.

      We read it in class with our teacher, who was an important guide because otherwise I wouldn’t have understood it as well as I did. 
     While coming acquainted with the merry mounters I soon became aware of the concept of hedonism that was present in their community, which strikes a huge difference between them and the Puritans.

Merry Mounters and Hedonism vs. Puritans and Austerity

      The Merry Mounters take the concept of hedonism and carpe diem to an extreme that makes it an unsustainable kind of life, plus they produce flowers which goes accordingly to their philosophy of life. This way of living is utopic and clearly unsustainable, yet it can offer interesting symbolism and contrast with the Puritan way of life. Producing flowers could have been an extreme example used by Hawthorne to better expose the contrast between them and the Puritans.

     The characters Edith and Edgar prove that it is no sustainable – it was not the Puritans who took them out of Merry Mount but the very fact with their marriage, they were brought to reality. Reality and suffering exist side by side with real life and happiness, so looking back they understood that the merry mounters lived on false happiness or an illusion. In my opinion, the couple represents the natural course of life. They knew about mirth but not about love (or at least monogamous love). They learnt that with love and happiness there is also pain because they grow in love, they grow a higher level of conscience which makes them more vulnerable, which is normal.

      However, if I had to choose, I will choose to live among the merry mounters. In contrast to the Puritans that were there at the time, it is easier to find sense in their choice of life. They might have wanted a sort of dream world, completely different from the rigid puritan one. They did not want to worship God but Nature instead. They did not find sense in the whipping post and in punishing people, they rather preferred to be merry and dance around a maypole, celebrating freedom.

     We can strike their difference, for instance, by analysing their symbols. The Merry Mounters have the Maypole as a symbol. It is the object that bounds them together, representing the idea of a “permanent spring”, a permanent festival. The Maypole was a permanent one, meaning that the celebration and being merry was throughout the whole year. On the other hand, the Puritans have the Whipping Post, which can symbolise their austere way of life and, in my opinion, a sadistic one. Puritans claimed that whatever they did, they did it in the name of God but didn’t they find pleasure in punishment? The human being is and always have been vicious.

Merry Mounters of today

      In addition to what we have studied about the story of Merry Mount, we acknowledged that their way of living and their beliefs are concepts that we still find today. Some people, nowadays, hang on to those beliefs - what we nowadays call “hippies” or “free thinkers”.  Still today, we can find communities or people that dance around a maypole for several different reasons that are now seen as something different rather than something to be reprimanded or punished about.

      We can become acquainted with that if we read through the article by Rich Beattie: “Maypole Festivals: Dancing to celebrate spring”. In this article we see that dancing around the Maypole is something quite ancient, practiced for different reasons. In the Medieval times, for example, they did it to ensure a “fruitful planting season”. Obviously the church disapproved of it because of its pagan roots. Fortunately the world as changed so much, due to its relief from religious tensions and power, that we often see some rituals or dancing happening only to celebrate May Day as being the International Workers’ Day.

     However, Beltane often is celebrated by dancing around a maypole, which brings us back to the pagan roots. Neo-pagans and wiccans still celebrate Beltane as the Gaelic May Day festival held on the first of May, along with other seasonal festivals like Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh.

Often we can see people celebrating Beltane by dancing around a maypole or with bonfires, which is the case of wiccans.

     From what I have read in a book called “Ritos e Mistérios Secretos do Wicca” by Gilberto de Lascariz, Wiccans have two types of celebrations: Esbat and Sabat. Both celebrations have more to do with the attainment of a higher consciousness and spiritual growth, along with pagan rituals and by celebrating the cycles of nature. It is, therefore, important to point out that for Wiccans, celebrating Sabats is more than agricultural festivities where they just celebrate the cycle of the earth’s fertility.

     Nowadays, in Scotland, the Beltane Fire Festival holds high success among those who celebrate Beltane. This revival started in 1988.  Although the festival holds the traditional Gaelic background and reasons (which can be many accordingly to what one believes in) it includes cultural and modern art events, which incorporates myth and drama from a variety of world cultures and diverse literary sources.

( Photos taken by Jasper Schwartz - Beltane Festival Fire, 2014)

Entry 1

Mary Rowlandson Captivity Narrative and John Winthrop’s Utopian Promise

       Mary Rowlandson was a puritan goodwife who tended to her home and children. In 1676, during King Philips war, a contingent of Narraganset Indians attacked and burred Lancaster, killing 17 people and taking 24 captive, which included M.Rowlandson. She lived among the Indians for 11 weeks and survived a journey of 150 miles.

     This incident is the basis of Rowlandson account of her captivity among the Indians. Her tale shaped the conventions of the captivity narrative, which was very popular since its inception in the 17^th century and which is an example of a jeremiad. Since Puritans believed that Native Americans were nothing less than “agents of Satan”, her experience among them was a useful tool for them to diminish their culture, which they did. However, Mary Rowlandson herself said that she composed her narrative out of gratitude for her deliverance from captivity and in the hopes of conveying the spiritual meaning of her experience to the other Puritans. Although they were strongly against Native Americans, the Puritans’ main objective was to prove that their religion was the best one and that they had proof of it through Rowlandson’s story.

My reading on Mary Rowlandson’s story

         When I knew that I was going to read a real story about someone who was made captive by Native Americans’ I got really thrilled. But when I finished reading the story, I had a mixture of feelings, especially towards Mary Rowlandson herself, but I decided that I should not judge someone without knowing much about her. Then I thought about what our teacher said – in the first place, she wrote this when she was released and not during her tragic captivity experience. Secondly the teacher told us about the possibility about Rowlandson being influenced by Puritans (which includes her husband) while writing her experiences. These are important facts or at least a clue for me to understand why she used far too many biblical references. That was the first thing I noticed throughout the story and I actually think that it made it seem less tragic and at a certain point a bit ridiculous.  Because of the numerous biblical references we can understand to what extent the Puritans where fanatical about their religion and how badly they wanted to prove it was the best one, through this real life story. 

Prologue

This journal serves as our guide through our learning process and at the same time it is our voice. In this journal, we can express our personal opinions on whatever we have learnt and at the same time provide some more research about the topics we most enjoyed.

In the beginning I didn’t know what to expect from this new subject, only that we were going to study North American literature. Although some names and topics rang a bell, I realized how little I knew about the historical context and that a “new world” was yet to be introduced to me. Studying about the Native Americans, for example, was something that got my attention because I feel that, in general, we know so little about them.

Moreover, learning about different religions is not always very present in our academic subjects, so I found it very interesting to learn about the Puritans on a deeper level. Also, I finally came across with names that were familiar to me but that I haven’t had the opportunity to really get to know better like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thoreau and Walt Whitman.  A strange coincidence was that just weeks before starting classes again I came across Walt Whitman in the wonderful series “Breaking Bad”.

For the time being, I hope to correspond to the expectations regarding the making of this journal and to enjoy my learning process throughout this semester.