Tuesday 22 November 2016

Homework for November 28: commentary proposal

"I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. … I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method."

 from Bartleby the Scrivener, anthology p. 138

 Considering the abovementioned quotation, express your opinion on how it compares to advices about what to live for, surmised from at least two other texts read in class.
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5 comments:

Unknown said...

Impressions of how life should be lived varied from the urge to act to the absolute motionless, with few alternatives in between. “Bartleby” is one of these alternatives because in spite of believing in the way of living described in the quotation, the protagonist is forced to act and then, after Bartleby’s death, he searches information about him.
We have seen this safe way of living in Hawthorne story. The minister chose a safe way to live, the way that allowed him to hide his sin instead of admitting it or dealing with it. He didn’t get married, he preferred a life with “no alarms and no surprises”. Diverting all of the attentions to the veil and to what lesson he thought of teaching, he hid his own sin.
However, the simple life of the “Bartleby” narrator is disturbed by an external event, an event which he could easily get rid of as he did. To Poe and Hawthorne, men are constrained by their own deep impulses, sometimes too monstrous to be unveiled and to be accepted by their conscious. There’s only two possibilities: hiding them or be caught by them. They can’t act freely, they are driven.
Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, on the other hand, are free of old knowledge and old beliefs. They urge man to act as they did. They take the world in their hands, and really see it, transform it and learn from it. There is nothing safe in this way of living. Prudence has to be left aside.
In “Rip Van Winkle”, the author seems to say that whether you act or whether you don’t act, it doesn’t matter because it all stays the same. Rip Van Winkle didn´t do anything in twenty years and nothing changed, their countrymen voted and talked about the political situation but they were just copies of their parents. Even the president was just an image of the king.
The urge to act appears in the majority of the texts that we’ve read. “The Declaration of Independence”, Douglass and Apess, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman and even Poe and Hawthorne in an unavoidable way impel to action. And at the end of “Bartlebly”, the exclamation “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” contains an intense impulse to act: we must live and act even though we face death.

23 November 2016 at 08:39
Cecília Sobral said...

No excerto apresentado, o narrador de "Bartleby the Scriviner" afirma que a melhor maneira de viver a vida é aquela que se apresentar menos laboriosa, sendo portanto desaconselhável possuir grandes ambições. Louva, deste modo, a prudência e a cautela. Discordo parcialmente desta afirmação.
Penso que, se a ambição for tida como uma característica inata do indivíduo, então a melhor maneira de viver a vida depende da personalidade do indivíduo. Para pessoas "de vistas curtas", como o narrador, a vida ideal corresponde de facto ao conceito utilitário de felicidade - existência de prazer e ausência de dor. Como não possuem quaisquer ambições, a vivência de uma existência pacata e comum é tudo quanto lhes basta. No entanto, se se tratar de um indivíduo naturalmente ambicioso, então a melhor maneira de viver a vida não é, de todo, a mais fácil, mas sim aquela que trouxer um maior sentimento de realização. Ainda que por vezes a ociosidade ou o medo leve este indivíduo a escolher o caminho mais fácil, em vez do mais proveitoso, este acabará por se arrepender a longo prazo, pois sentirá que não conquistou nada na vida (a qual, importa notar, é só uma) ou até que esta é despida de propósito. Pessoalmente, pertenço a esta segunda categoria de indivíduos, portanto para mim uma vida fácil quase nunca é uma vida boa.
Vários dos autores que temos estudado ao longo do semestre demonstram, nas suas obras, pertencer também à segunda categoria de indivíduos. Thoreau, em "Walden", não só narra a história de como decidiu "ir contra a corrente", vivendo em reclusão e recusando-se a pagar o "poll tax", como insiste que "Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep", advogando claramente uma posição anti-hedonista. Os próprios "Founding Fathers", na "Declaration of Independence", estão, ao justificarem a sua rebelião contra a coroa de Inglaterra, a defender a legitimidade de um tal acto e a defender, no geral, o não-conformismo, estando dispostos a abdicar de "[their] lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor". Frederick Douglass, sendo um ex-escravo e um abolicionista, é o pináculo da atitude não-conformista. Para além disso, Douglass tomou uma decisão que definitivamente não contribuiu para o seu bem-estar imediato: quando convidado para discursar perante homens brancos no dia 4 de Julho, Douglass aproveitou a oportunidade para confrontar os Americanos brancos com a sua profunda hipocrisia. O seu discurso, em si, também apela à acção, particularmente quando Douglass cita as Sagradas Escrituras ("Africa must rise") e o poema "The Triumph of Freedom", de William Lloyd Garrison ("With head, and heart, and hand I'll strive, /To break the rod, and rend the gyve, / The spoiler of his prey deprive - so witness Heaven!").
Em conclusão, penso que a existência ou inexistência de ambição e determinação numa pessoa é o que determina o que é para esta uma vida boa. Existem várias formas de viver a vida, e cada uma delas traz ou não felicidade a diferentes tipos de pessoas. Posto isto, muitos dos autores estudados discordariam terminantemente da opinião do narrador deste conto, e eu, pessoalmente, também discordo.

23 November 2016 at 09:58
Anonymous said...

KANSU EKİN TANCA

In this quotation, the narrator explicitly admits that “the easiest way of life is the best”. He lives in his own borders, and does not want to expand them, nor does he want to take risks; so he calls himself as a “safe” man. He wants to have a comfortable working experience in which he does not take new challenges so that he can feel protected. His attitude towards life totally disagrees with Thoreau’s suggestions.
In Walden, for example, he wants to experience every single moment. He wakes up early and spends his day actively. In addition to this, he is also eager to discover new things as he believes that every day will bring more beauties. His own approach to life leads him to go “to the woods”. (p.81) Therefore, the difference between the narrator in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Thoreau becomes clear. Whereas Thoreau is living for nature and identifies himself with activity and movement, the narrator remains to be “eminently safe” (p.138).
We can also compare this quotation with Mr. Hooper’s attitudes in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. I think that Mr. Hooper also has a specific life ideal. He lives for other people as he wants to guide them with his black veil. He decides to wear his black veil and continues to walk in the streets with it although he is exposed to harsh criticism in the neighbourhood. It is also important to understand how he approaches life. He wants to teach a lesson and change people’s attitudes towards life. Therefore, unlike the other characters, or narrators, he lives not for himself but for the other people. In this sense, his ideas are different from the narrator in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” as well as Thoreau himself.
The other example can be Rip Van Winkle. He is described as a “simple man” and the narrator says that he “take[s] the world easy” (p.31) . Moreover, we are given a deeper insight into his ordinary life in which he does not appear to be an active person. He does the same things every day, such as assisting the neighbours, telling the children stories and spending time with his dog. Therefore, like the narrator in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, he is also not searching for new experiences thus keeps on living his own ordinary life until he encounters the miraculous change.
As it can be seen, every text, with its characters, or writers, gives us some distinctive suggestions to understand what we should live for. In all of the texts, individual perspectives are given. Thus, we can observe their ideas as well as their consequences.

27 November 2016 at 09:47
Unknown said...

In this quotation, the narrator tries to show what he is and what he cannot be. Also, he prefers to simple life and simple life does not lead him to take risk, that is why he says that "All who know me consider me an eminently safe man." We can say that he admits that he is lazy because he associates himself as an unambitious lawyer who never addresses a jury. In this respect, it shows that he does not tend to take risk in his life.

In Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, the protagonist can also be considered as lazy like Bartleby because he was fed up with his own wife and all he thought was to run away from there. He does not tend to take responsibility of being a father because easiest way of the life was to escape for him. And also he had simple life, he was just wandering around the town, telling the children stories and he was the one who was loved by everyone like Bartleby. Bartyleby also did not do anything special, does not take responsibilities during his work life.

In The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, unlike Bartleby, Mr Hooper takes risk and he wears black veil in order to show everybody's sins which are hidden. He does not care what people think. And also, he does not have simple life unlike Bartyleby because he is busy with his own job although people looks down on him. Although Bartleby gives importance his comfort, Mr Hooper does not give importance his comfort the only thing he thinks is to show other people's sin. In this sense, we can say that he lives not for himself unlike Bartleby.

All in all, all characters who are mentioned above show their individualities and their own ideas. In this case, every people live with their own choices. While some people choose to live with harsh conditions some people choose to live simple life.

27 November 2016 at 16:02
Sebastião Veloso said...

Bartleby's narrator is subjective and opinative and presenceful. The call to steadiness tries to charm the reader to realize that to do the little as possible is the best way lead a life. To be able to remain, eternally, in a state of "cool tranquility" is the ultimate goal to lead a better life. Therefore, out with ambition, out with action, out with initiative and out, specially, with ideas. This is the type of life that is being argued here. The kind of life, that Bartleby apparently, supports.

Having read Emerson and Throreau, Melville creates a character which disagrees entirely with these great author thesis. The formal, continual and ever-present idea that life must be enjoyed and filled with meaning, with action, that one must relish in Nature and not dedicate himself to the easy way, like Thoreau mentions in the first chapter (Economy), and reject a harder but more fulfilling way of life. To be a "delayed corpse", as Fernando Pessoa writes, is the exact opposite of the Transcendalists.

Another author that, through a autobiography, that tries to call action upon american lives is Ben Franklin. Throughout his entire life, he never ceases to try and obtain the things he wants. Joining and searching printers and finally being elected Senator and signing the Declaration of Independence. He judges everyone who sits and relishes upon nothing, condemning them.

In conlusion, life must be full and enjoyed, but if, in the end of one's life, the sum adds up to nothing, that our existence in the world did not mean anything for anyone, and that life was pointless, then we were complete and utterly useless. Fight for your life!

28 November 2016 at 04:37

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