Literary Criticism Essay

The beauty ab appear literature is that it can be interpreted in a number of ship delegacy and all those ways can be regarded as a possibility and eve solo true. No matter what angle, approach or perception a somebody uses to see, analyze and scutinize a literary playact, that synopsis leave always be considered as a possibly correct literary crticism.However, this is also the line regarding literary criticisms since there is no wrong analysis, everything can be true. Thus, an analysis does non necessarily help subscribers in further understanding the schoolbookual matterbook, analyses average give readers the chance to look at a school text in a different light.This is what Liane Norman gives readers when anliterary criticism was create verbally regarding the famous work of Herman MelvilleBartleby the scribbler with a subtitle of A Story of Wall Street. In Normans analysis, Bartleby and the Reader, she gives grandeur on the relationship of the text, Bartleby the s cratch awl, and the readers itself of the text. According to Norman, the text pore on having the reader as an important character or qualification the reader play an important role in the structure and interepretation of the text.This analysis of Norman is with loopholes, as with many literary criticisms. She does indeed present a rather effective and convincing justnessment on Bartleby the Scrivener unless she failed to pip out the important of the text on its own. It is as if, the text cannot exist without the role that the reader played in the knowledgeability of the text when in fact, Bartleby the Scrivener can be seen as a creation which is intended to point something out to the reader.This argument is what will be contained in this criticism of a literary criticism wherein a premise is presented that Norman did deliver a good argument and judgement on Bartleby the Scrivener except she failed in delivering a good argument that should have not illicited further contestati ons. In Herman Melvilles Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street, a scrivener (or copyist or clerk in a firm), is the garter while the narrator is the protagonists boss but who, it seems, wants to be the protagonist himself.Tthe attorney who is Bartlebys boss gives in any case practically information about himself and too elfin information on the protagonist, Bartleby. The report card starts off in the lawyer difference on about how he hired and met Bartleby but not in the beginning going to great lengths as he introduces himself I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into much than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular sort out of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been writtenImean the law-copyists or scriveners.(Melville, 2006) The Lawyer and Bartleby soon venture into a rather harmonous and safe relationship with each otherthat is until Bartleby decides integrity day that he has equal of universe a scrivener and stops doing his job properly to the point that he does not do anything at all. The curious and perverse Lawyer just permits Bartleby be as the scrivener goes on with life doing abruptly nothing. Unfortunately, things get out off hand to the point that Bartleby is imprisoned for abatement out in the building when it is neither his home ror has he any rights to loiter in the place.This ends the story as Bartleby refuses everythingcompanionship, food, waterhe dies a sad death in prison, all alone. Later on, the Lawyer finds out that Bartleby has been working in the Dead Letter Office wherein he sorts the position of dead people. The Lawyer associates this previous job of Bartleby as the reason why the scrivener has become depressed and decided to one day, to just let everything go. In Liane Normans Bartleby and the Reader, the role that the reader plays in giving meaning to Bartleby and the Scrivener is focused on.Accor ding to Norman (1971), there is a rigorous and demanding human exercise that takes place between the reader and the story. This transaction is the ability of the text to have meaning only when the reader wills it do so. Thus, the dialogue, lines and other descriptions in the story would be moot and pointless if the reader does not conceptualise otherwise. In fact, the reader becomes a character in the story itself without macrocosm in it as what Norman (1971) asserts, the reader is two participant and judge in the same way that the Lawyer or the narrator of the story is also the participant and the judge.Thus, while the Lawyer is one of the characters in the story, his way of storytelling wherein he is detached from the other characters makes him have the same role as the reader. This in turn, makes the reader as the Lawyer and the Lawyer as one of the readers. But more than this form of analysis, Norman takes the notch further by relating the text and the characters to a greate r and more toilsome extent by juxtaposing it with Christian values or ideals and the nature of democracytwo things which ar inherently, albeit subtly, presented as the themes in Bartleby the Scrivener.On the other hand, the way Norman anaylzed the literary text was correct in a way that she gives meaning to the context and the topic but remiss in her ability to add too much interepretation and meaning to what could have been just simple or meaningless lines. This is perchance a bigger mistake in not being able-bodied to see much meaning in a literary work, that of comprehend too mucha case of overrecital. Norman was not dishonorable in her analysis, but she was extreme in that too much interpretatation is abandoned from too little information.Thus, her mistake was that she was not able to give importance to the interepretation of the literary text as a text itself but she instead, pure on the text as how it would be interpreted by the reader. Bartleby the Srivener does not become merely Bartleby the Scrivener but it becomes, instead, Bartleby and the Reader. Norman placed too much emphasis and importance on the reader as being part of the literary work and literary analysis. But the reader is of argument important, for who will analyze a text but that being the reader himself/herself?However, what Norman has done is to indicate that there is but one reading presented by the reader and that is the only correct reading while at the same time the reader is no one but herself. What Norman should have done is present the analysis on the text as being Bartleby and A Reader instead of having it as Bartleby and THE Reader. For using the determining factor the indicates that there is only one reader and that one reader is and will always be right.Thus, Normans analysis gives a vaild credibility to her argumenteven if the argument is indeed credible, it is unfortunately not valid. Although, there is something which is admirable and commendable in Normans anal ysis which is the last part of her article wherein she gives a profound interpretation on the implication of the Lawyers last lines regarding Bartlebys death The deep smell out of disappointment that the story inspires in the reader is a function of the aura of Americas hight but impossible promises men have not escaped their limitations plain by founding a new policy.Bartleby is the test of democratic- Christian principle. If his opponent exposes human shortcomings, his persistence reveals man stubbornly laying claim to his humanity. (Norman, 1971) Norman maginificently gives a clear idea and interepretation on Bartlebys death while at the same time, relates its implication to humanity which is humanitys tendency to gain new insights but miserably ends in not carrying out those new policies or insights.Over all, both Melville (in using the character of the Lawyer) and Norman are correct, society stubbornly believes in their humanityeven if it proves that their idealist views on humanitys humanness is sometimes misplaced. References Melville, H. (2006). Bartleby the scrivener a story from Wall Street. Great Short Works of Herman Melville. parvenue York HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. pp. 19-38. Norman, L. (1971). Bartleby and the reader. The New England Quarterly 44 (1) 22-39.