Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” has some common traits to Hawthorne’s “The Customs House” in The Scarlet Letter. As Lauren Etling pointed out in her blog, the environments are especially similar. Both areas are rather lonely places filled with the same people day after day, almost never changing. Bartleby does not change, or even leave, throughout his time of being employed by the lawyer just as things remain unchanged for the narrator in “The Customs House”.
The attitude of the two characters in these two passages is also similar. The narrator in “The Customs House” feels separated from his fellow co-workers just as Bartleby alienated himself from the others in his office. However, the narrator in “The Customs House” strove to make a name for himself by writing Hester’s story rather than Bartleby who simply stayed at the office.
Another similar element is the face that neither narrators of either story was given a name. All other characters were yet they were not. In a discussion on Ashley Holtzer’s blog, I wondered whether the authors could not think of a name suitable for the characters or if they were just not important enough to be named at all. The focus of the “The Customs House” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” was to tell the stories of others, not focus on the narrator’s.
(Oh, by the way this is my 100th entry. Figures it'd be about The Scarlet Letter.)
Congrats on your milestone.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at September 27, 2005 11:21 AMThank you and you actually helped me mark another milestone. Your comment was my 300th.
Posted by: Nessa at September 27, 2005 12:47 PMThat is an interesting way of thinking about the names that were given to the characters in Bartleby the Scrivener. The characters seemed to be so unimportant, not to the story but in relation to Bartleby, that it was not important to give them names.
Posted by: Stacy at September 28, 2005 08:22 PM