An Ode To The Ozarks

Winter's Bone has left me wondering if any joy is to be had in them thar hills.  The constant allusions to crank and its insidious hold on the Ozark rural population are troubling, to say the least.  As a tribute to the novel's country folk, I composed a very poorly written ditty that embodies my feelings about the story's grim atmosphere thus far...


Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me confusion.
Banish thought and
reason, for neither
provides warmth in
the cold Ozarks.

Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me income.
Speed your poison
swiftly, on powdery
wings of bliss, that
I may know money.

Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me misery.
Allow me passage
to my brighter past,
that I may wallow
in my present torture.

Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me children.
Wipe clean the slate
of my mind, forsaking
inhibition and restraint,
embracing only need.

Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me death.
Enrich violence in
my soul, until no
deed is too heinous
to encompass.

Oh crank, my crank!
Grant me release.
For sorrows countless
and life misused,
hasten my departure,
reality needs me not.


Ah well, I'm no poet, but this does accurately express my gloomy disposition reading this novel...

James

Essay #2 Draft

No pictures or links this time, mates, just an essay for you to pick apart!  Be gentle!  Oh, and I didn't put it in the correct format, since I'm just looking for content feedback.

James

A Tragic Hero

               Bartleby, the main character in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener:  A Story of Wall-Street, can best be understood as a tragic, melancholy hero, an unhappy representative of the vast masses of workers that live and die within the enormously hectic and impersonal industrialized society that the western world has embraced.  Bartleby is a victim, both of his own unknown inner torments and the meaninglessness of his pedantic tasks.  Without any personal ties to family or friends, and weighed down by depression and the insignificance of his work, he eventually allows himself to drift away into oblivion, forsaking and forsaken by modern society.

               Melville is very clear about the humdrum and unglamorous nature of a scrivener’s work.  As early as the first paragraph of the story he remarks about the nondescript nature of law-copyists or scriveners, “of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written” (Melville, para 1), an insinuation that there is remarkably little interest in scriveners beyond their employment circle.  The dreary, monotonous work is an underlying theme throughout the story, but it is never truly discussed, just illustrated with a few instances of Bartleby’s unique refusal to perform the tasks.  Indeed, Melville spends more time describing the narrator’s three employees than he spends discussing the nature of a scrivener’s work!

               The office itself contributes mightily to the lackluster atmosphere that is Bartleby’s last home and workplace.  Amid the busy scribbling of pen on parchment, one was spared any view at all that might allow the mind to wander into more beautiful landscapes.  As Melville notes, in one direction the windows “looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft” (Melville, para 5), while the other windows “commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade” (Melville, para 5).  There was literally nothing beyond the work, a monotonous, tedious sort of work that plodded on and on into the future.  The office was a cave, uninviting but suitable for a scrivener’s purposes.

               Bartleby himself contributes to this lifeless morass with his own actions, huddling behind his high green folding screen and withdrawing completely from his coworkers and his employer.  In fact, beyond his repeated refusals, there isn’t any interaction at all, much to the surprise and concern of the narrator.  Melville describes Bartleby’s location behind the screen as his “hermitage,” an eloquent way of portraying Bartleby’s self-imposed isolation.  This voluntary seclusion increased in scope, as Bartleby continued to refuse tasks, until finally Bartleby refused to do the work at all.  He was withdrawing, turning inward to escape the cold bureaucratic world around him.  This departure didn’t go unnoticed by the narrator, but he was a product of the same system that Bartleby wished to leave, and he could not find a way in his limited vision of reaching Bartleby and bringing him back into the fold.

               In the final paragraph, Melville gives a profound and insightful hint into the unraveling of Bartleby’s soul:

The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity:—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.  (Melville, para 250)

In effect, Melville is illustrating quite clearly to the reader that Bartleby’s mental collapse had begun prior to his engagement at the narrator’s office, in an employment that had tested his will.  It was monotonous, dreary, and unfulfilling work with little human contact, tossing hopes and dreams into fires to be consumed and forgotten.  Humanity was secondary to the job, and the unending bleakness of his tasks stretched to the life’s horizon, a daily grind that tore into his soul and deadened his heart.  Bartleby’s work as a scrivener didn’t improve his wounded condition, but rather contributed to his deterioration with its own repetitive and uninteresting tasks, until it had finally crushed his will to live beneath the uncaring gears of modern industrialized society.

Melville evidently wanted the reader to initially marvel at Bartleby’s eccentricities, and then feel the utmost sympathy for the deep depression clearly gripping the pale scrivener.  Finally, the reader is invited to share in the narrator’s sadness for the departed soul of Bartleby, a victim of an indifferent but bustling society that doesn’t seem to have the time for human kindness.  Bartleby is a tragic hero, an iconic figure for the workers of modern society, lost within the bureaucratic nightmare and doomed to a lifetime of plodding, obscure, and meaningless work.  His final act is a testament to his unwillingness to participate any further.  If the narrator had been able to engage Bartleby in one final conversation, it might have been thus:

               “Bartleby, you must live.  You must!”

               “I would prefer not to.”

A Historical Depression

Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener:  A Story of Wall-Street always leaves a poignant lump in my throat.  It is an absolutely heart-breaking tale of a man's descent into abject depression, and his last dignified attempt to reach out for human compassion, ultimately to be rejected as a result of confusion and misunderstanding.  Melville illustrates perfectly the conflict between an uncaring world and our caring souls, and Bartleby clearly represents the type of depression and lost, lonely moods we inevitably feel at some point in our lives, needing human contact and understanding to bring us out of our blackness.  The narrator's unintended rejection of Bartleby was the final nail in his coffin, and the pale scrivener allowed himself to drift away on the currents of the Lethe.

In particular, Melville eloquently described the narrator's internal conflicts, the turmoil between business-as-usual and a heartfelt sympathy for a fellow human being:

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.  (Melville, par 93)

In this passage Melville explains the conflict in the lawyer's mind as reaching a climax of hopelessness.  The narrator is finally coming to terms with the realization that Bartleby is uncurable, unreachable, lost within his own shell, and this realization is a painful one.  The narrator isn't without sympathy, and the knowledge that he will be unable to aid Bartleby is anything but soothing.  He now knows that the practical solution would be to dismiss Bartleby and allow him to survive or not as he chooses, since the narrator isn't responsible for Bartleby's well-being, but practicality is a poor substitute for human caring, and the practical approach does nothing to calm the distress in the narrator's heart.

Melville is demonstrating quite clearly the human behavioral phenomenon of depression and society's reaction to it.  People have an automatic desire to "perk up" depressed individuals, and we grow irritable and exasperated when our methods meet with little success.  We reach a tormented impasse between our knowledge that we are not "our brother's keeper," that all men and women are  ultimately responsible for themselves alone,...and our nurturing, caring nature that refuses to allow a fellow human being to suffer.

I'm generally not a fan of Melville's, but I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoy this short story.  Extremely accurate portrayal of human nature!

Your blog post assignment for this week is to explain your understanding of the difference between summary and analysis. You may want to include some illustrations and examples from a book that you enjoy or have read for another class.

Well, at its most simplistic, summary and analysis is just a more intelligent way of saying description and opinion, activities that we engage in on a daily basis.  If your wife asks you about someone you met today, you start with the description and then offer an opinion about the fellow.  "Tall, well-dressed, nice enough guy, but a bit too political for me."

Summary and analysis in one short sentence.  Simple.

But not quite that simple.

In a literary context, summary and analysis won't be that brief, of course.  If you want a reader to understand your point, succinctness will count against you.  Clear, concise language and a thorough approach to detail is absolutely necessary to counter possible misunderstandings or misinterpretations of your analysis.  Don't assume that the reader understands your position; start from scratch and build the tower from the foundation up.  Once they reach the top they'll see the view, and even if they don't enjoy the panorama they will at least see what you see.

It's also important to be aware of your own internal prejudices and biases.  These will inevitably filter into your analysis, and that's expected, but they will also color your summary, too, perhaps in a way that doesn't do the original work justice.

Using one of my favorite recent books as an example, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, consider the myriad ways this book is summarized in various book reviews (and for some good examples, try http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion).  The critiques are generally, but not always, reflective of the reviewer's religious beliefs, i.e. the book is lambasted in Christian, Orthodox Jewish, and Muslim theological spheres while it is favorably received by mildly religious and nonreligious book reviewers.  This is basic human behavior and comes as no surprise, but it is interesting how these same reviewers taint their summations of the book with these very same biases.  How can a book be both well-written and horribly written?  Both those comments were in many summations of the book, and these are obviously opinions, or arguments, and they belong in the analysis.

The best literary summaries are objectively neutral, keeping our personal feelings out of the text.  Our opinions come later, in the analysis.
Truth be told, I don't like doing summaries.  It is very boring writing.  I prefer to jump right into the arguments, and allow my eloquence to dazzle and entertain, or make me any number of lifelong enemies with my irreverent wit.  Summarizing is just too pedantic and pedestrian for me.

Image URLs:

http://media.wiley.com/lit_note_images/331/1.jpg

http://cache0.bookdepository.com/assets/images/book/medium/9780/6189/9780618918249.jpg

My comments about Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal,"....the idea that selling and eating very young children will reduce their burden upon the Kingdom of Ireland.

I love it!