Name 1

Student Name

Dr. Susan Shelangoskie

ENG 200 DLB

1 May 2012

Title of Essay

        In Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," the character of the narrator is

revealed through his first-person descriptions of the employees he hires.

[...]

 

Name 2

The character of the narrator in the story changes in response to the static

behavior from his eccentric employee Bartleby: "As I walked home in a pensive

mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself on

my masterly management of getting rid of Bartleby" (Melville 169). As this

passage demonstrates, the narrator's attitude changes swiftly, over the course of a

walk home, from "pity" to "vanity," and the narrator will continue to vacillate in his

attitude toward Bartleby as the story continues. Because of this tendency to

change, the narrator can be described as a round character.

[...]

 

Name 2

In Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, the speaker describes his love in terms of what she is

not, for example:

               My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

               Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

               If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun (1074 lines 1-3)

The speaker's use of antithesis in these lines highlights both the ordinariness of

his love and that absurdity of the typical comparisons found in the conventions of

courtly love. As the poem goes on, however, the speaker's lady love is less and

less appealing: "And in some perfumes there is more delight / Than in the breath

that from by mistress reeks" (1074 lines 7-8). Though the modern meaning of reeks

is more pejorative than in Shakespeare's day, these lines effectively convey that it

is not only the physical appearance of the lady, but attributes of the lady that

appeal to other senses, like smell, that puncture the usual idealization of women.

[...]

 

Works Cited

Dowling, Ellen. "The Derailment of A Streetcar Named Desire." Literature Film
          Quarterly 9 (1981).4: 233-40. Print.

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener." 1853. The Norton Introduction to
          Literature. Shorter 9th ed. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J.
          Mays. New York: Norton, 2006. 153-78. Print.

Shakespeare. "Sonnet 130 . "The Norton Introduction to
          Literature. Shorter 9th ed. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J.
          Mays. New York: Norton, 2006. 1074. Print.