Is the narrator actuated more by self-interest or by sympathy in his behavior toward Bartleby?
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Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Afterwords
Did you miss the meeting? Or did we fail to discuss all the questions? Perhaps something slipped your mind, or only occurred to you later. If so, here's your chance to continue the conversation. For the time being, this blog is open for comment only to registered members of the book group. Other readers may contact me at hcrane@cambridgema.gov. Please, no flaming or cussing.
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The narratior is presented to us an average man and in him as in most of us these two motivations rise and fall with each predominating at different times. A key phrase is the one Melville uses to describe what the lawyer wished to achieve by locating Bartleby in his office behind a screen: "privacy and society." The narrator wishes to have Bartleby close but still keep a distance, to make quick and profitable use of his abilities yet still have the easy sociability and fellow-feeling with him that he enjoys with Turkey and Nippers, and to switch between and mingle these two as one manages the proportions of cold water and hot from a running tap. Part of the genius of the story is Melville's arrangement, as in the better class of fairy tales, for his narrator to get exactly what he wants but not quite in the way he planned on getting it. Bartleby stays close--closer than the lawyer ever believed he could be--and yet is still impossibly, unreachably distant. He's right in the room--in fact, he won't leave--and he's still behind the screen.
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