September 25, 2001
“On errands of life, these letters speed to death” (339).
Death, especially
untimely death, is a concept that many authors attempt to explore when using the
subject of searching for humanity and the meaning of life. When Herman Melville
writes, “On errands of life, these letters speed to death” (339) in his story
Bartleby the Scrivener, he is stating that death is simply an errand in
life, which everyone encounters, however Bartleby has experienced this in a very
untimely fashion.
...And More
Likewise, Fred Daniels from Richard Wright’s The Man Who
Lived Underground, experiences an untimely death after he figures out the
reason for his guilt is inherent. Both Bartleby and Fred are alike in the many
ways they have suffered in their search of humanity. As well, they both have
shared social difficulties that hinder their true personalities to shine through
the dark lives they live. Ultimately however, Bartleby and Fred come to
untimely deaths for particular reasons.
Melville
Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener is a story
of a man named Bartleby who is able to avoid any task he is asked to do by
saying “I’d prefer not to.” Bartleby uses this response again and again until
he eventually refuses to do anything asked of him. Melville uses objects to
symbolize the effect of Bartleby’s life, which leads to his death. Walls
surround everything about Bartleby’s life. Day after day, walls surround
Bartleby. Bartleby’s office faces grimy walls; screen walls isolate his office
space; Bartleby dies facing a wall, and finally, the story’s subtitle is, “A
story of Wall Street.” Melville writes, “Behind his screen he must be standing
in one of those dead-wall reveries of his” (326). Bartleby dreamt of walls, and
he practically lived inside of one. Bartleby’s constant life surrounded by
walls is perhaps a reason for his fight with humanity and his open struggles
with society. These fights and struggles eventually lead to the death of
Bartleby. Once Bartleby’s walls began to cave in around him, there was no other
place to go but death. Bartleby’s death came untimely, for he was at a point at
his life where he had a choice to make to either come out of the socially inept
environment he lived, or to allow the problems he faced daily catch up with
him. He chose to let his problems take over his life, and this lead to his
death. Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener tells a tale about a man
whose death was untimely, and his social problems and how the walls and barriers
that he faced his entire life created problems with humanity.
Wright
Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground is a
story of a young black man who is running from the law. The man, Fred Daniels,
is full of guilt and fear, and he is constantly referring to the guilt and fear
that he has within himself. When he ends up at the police station to turn
himself in, he tells the officers how he was innocent for the murder, but at the
same time, he was guilty. Fred was guilty for who he was, not for some crime he
committed. Wright writes, “Why was this sense of guilt so seemingly innate, so
easy to come by, to think, to feel, so verily physical?” (373). Fred realizes
that his guilt was inescapable, and it was purely a physical guilt that could
never be reversed. This pain and anguish that Fred undergoes is a precursor to
his death. If he had never turned himself in to the police strictly for being
black, he would have been able to live, freely to an extent, underground.
Wright later writes, “It seemed that when one felt this guilt one was retracing
in one’s feelings a faint pattern designed long before; it seemed that one was
always trying to remember a gigantic shock that had left a haunting impression
upon one’s body which one could not forget or shake off, but which had been
forgotten by the conscious mind, creating in one’s life a state of eternal
anxiety” (373). “Forgotten by the conscious mind, creating a life of eternal
anxiety” is exactly what happened to Fred. He allowed his physical “guilty”
appearance take control of his life, and he became a man of eternal anxiety.
The anxiety led him to the police, and he was therefore violently killed. Like
Bartleby, the events that kept building up in his life led to his death. Both
men were stricken with a sense of guilt, and both men were hidden from society.
Bartleby kept to himself, and lived every moment in solitude, and Fred was
forced to stay out of the social world because of his physical guilt.
Conclusion
Herman Melville and Richard Wright both explore the idea of
personal struggles with humanity and social differences. Melville uses his
character, Bartleby, to show an untimely death that comes from walls caving in
on this man who shuts his entire life off from the world. Melville uses Fred
Daniels, a black man struggling with guilt and fear because he cannot escape his
physical appearance. The mere fact he is black makes him guilty for living.
His being black is the reason for his death. Both Bartleby and Fred had
expected deaths in that they were going to sometime die, as all people do;
however, they were untimely. Bartleby knew that he was soon going to die, and
Fred knew that he could not live because his guilt was inescapable.
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Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener. From Abcarian and Koltz, “Literature: Reading and writing the human experience.” St. Martins Press. 1998.
Wright, Richard. The Man Who Lived Underground. From Abcarian and Koltz, “Literature: Reading and writing the human experience.” St. Martins Press. 1998.
Copyright 2001