A Comparison Of Herman Melville And Nathaniel Hawthorne

Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne both use characters of an irregular disposition to display their insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Melville’s characters are more relatable having a narrator who interacts with the protagonist, while Hawthorne resigns his narrator to the role of a cynical observer. In the case of both Bartleby and Wakefield, the stage is set by a general fixation of the narrator with the protagonists. Melville’s narrator proclaimed that Bartleby “was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or heard of” and Hawthorne’s narrator saw Wakefield’s actions as “perhaps the strangest, instant on record, of marital delinquency”. Both authors use their introductions to intrigue readers by the prospect of discovering the reason for the protagonist’s alleged abnormalities.
This difference in character development is probably due to Hawthorne’s more serious writing style. Melville’s narrator knows and interacts with Bartleby saying “Poor fellow! Thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence, his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary” conveying a compassion that is absent in Hawthorne’s narrator’s similar statement “Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world!”. Melville’s narrator more effectively draws the reader into the world of the protagonist by making them feel sympathy for Bartleby, while readers are more prone to deem Wakefield a dimwitted “nincompoop”