Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Peter E. Firchow

Critical Essay by Peter E. Firchow

SOURCE: "Bartleby: Man and Metaphor," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. V, 1968, pp. 342-48.

Firchow is an American critic. In the following essay, he examines the meaning and significance of the final paragraph of "Bartleby, the Scrivener. "

"Bartleby," as the anonymous narrator informs us at the very outset of Melville's story, is a brief account of that portion of the life of this strangest of all scriveners that the narrator has been privileged to see with his "own astonished eyes." Of other, more ordinary scriveners, he almost apologetically explains, he might have related "divers histories," or written even "the complete life." But not for Bartleby: for him "no materials exist" to compile a "full and satisfactory biography." The narrator terms this lack of information "an irreparable loss to literature," and the reader who has pored long over this enigmatic story is tempted to share his sentiments. For...
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