billr is not currently reading any books.
I’m male, from Japan. I’ve been a DailyLit member since June 30, 2011.
Books
- Dead Souls finished
- The Intellectual Devotional II finished
- The Wisdom of (Steve) Jobs finished
- Ulysses finished
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow finished
- Hell-Heaven finished
- White Horse finished
- Words That Matter from O, The Oprah Magazine finished
- Khan Academy Video Course: Differential Equations finished
- The Confidence-Man finished
- Famous Modern Ghost Stories finished
- Bartleby the Scrivener finished
- The Night Land finished
- When the World Shook finished
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions finished
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn finished
- Gulliver's Travels finished
- The Scarlet Letter finished
Posts
Bartleby the Scrivener - pessimistic view of the limitations of philanthropism?
I'd like to hear other people's interpretations of this unusual story, which ends on what to me is a sad and rather unsettling note. The story seems to me to say that some people (i.e., Bartleby) "prefer" only to be left alone. Other people may feel sorry for them and want to reach out to them, to "get inside their head" and help them, but when the person fails to respond to their overtures of assistance and they come to the eventual realization that they are incapable of "forcing" the person to accept their offers of kindness, they begin to feel that that person's very presence is a source of irritation and they finally can no longer put up with it, despite their earnest hope to help him or her. It's a very bleak picture, leaving one with the persistent feeling that "somehow, maybe I could have done more..." Any other ideas?