In Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s essay titled Monster Culture, he details his seven theses that work towards a further understanding of culture through the construction of monsters. For the purpose of my writing, I will focus specifically on his sixth thesis, “Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire” (Cohen 16). Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street” chillingly demonstrates Cohen’s argument, that the monster attracts, through the character of Bartleby himself. Cohen argues that there is a simultaneous repulsion and attraction at the core of the construction of the monster. He states, “We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we envy its freedom, and perhaps its sublime despair.”
Bartleby can be read as a ghostly or monster figure in the narrative, not only packed with mystery but with something more, something supernatural. From the moment Bartleby first appears in the office, it is apparent that he has an unworldly hold over the narrator. The narrator states, “there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me” (Melville 8). As the reader, we can’t help but wonder why the narrator doesn’t and can’t fire Bartleby, even though he proves himself to be unfit for employment on the premise that he simply prefers not to perform his normal daily obligations and tasks. The hold that Bartleby has on the narrator is unexplainable. Cohen would argue that this simultaneity of anxiety and desire that is the character of Bartleby is the reason for his dangerous enticement of the narrator (Cohen 19). There is a large opportunity cost for the narrator to keep Bartleby around. The narrator is well aware that he is sacrificing money and productivity but he just cant’ seem to let his employee go. The narrator says in reference to his feeling towards Bartleby, “My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion” (Melville 14). This evolution of emotions the narrator goes through further illustrates Cohen’s argument that we as a culture are drawn to what we are most terrified of. Our jealousies, anxieties, and fears become our personal monsters that we ultimately surrender ourselves to. To conclude his sixth thesis, Cohen poses the question “Do monsters really exist?” and then in answering himself, he states, “Surely they must, for if they did not, how could we?” (Cohen 20) Bartleby is the narrator’s personal construction of a monster. At the conclusion of the narrative, the narrators says, “I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of” (Melville 24). Since Bartleby exists as the narrator’s construction of a monster, the narrator feels a deeply personal attachment to him. It is almost painful for the narrator to finally let him go, even after all Bartleby has put him through. Even though Bartleby was a monster, he was the narrator’s monster, a personal construct of his fears and anxieties that takes root in desire and attraction. Works Cited Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print. Melville, Herman. "Bartelby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. Print.
1 Comment
India-Grace Farley Kellogg
9/22/2017 03:53:27 pm
I agree with you that Bartleby is the monster for the narrator, something which he is repulsed by yet cannot let go. In this same way, I think that Bartleby also can be seen as a general fear of letting go of society's norms, but the seductiveness of rebellion against the status quo, as Bartleby does everyday. While Bartleby does signify the narrator's fears, he also embodies society's fears.
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