Bartleby The Scrivener
Lissandra Deliz
Professor Samyn
WIS
March 21, 2015
“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
The development of our complex modern society has taken shape first in the imagination of its members who, through the establishment of a collective unconscious, build a set of rules and guidelines for survival and perpetuation. The Greeks, masters of many social advances in their time, used their gods as examples to imitate or be wary of interchangeably, demonstrating an understanding of the perpetual duality of human life. Other civilizations developed their own figures or models and even imitated each other when beneficial to the advancement of their purposes.
Carl Jung shapes these figures, in his theory of the mind, as archetypes, universal psychological tools that the collective unconscious utilizes to somehow transmit and perpetuate social arrangements. These archetypes play a role in society as it keeps it together, assigning a role to its members. This is a somewhat chosen role by the individual who, while not in complete control of its influences has in most cases complete autonomy to decide on the particular decisions of what to do with the learned behaviors. While archetypes seem to be universal they are certainly not universally defined, thus the duality of mythological gods, superheroes and any other representation of humanity. There is a duality that makes us human beings, and how we deal with that duality is what makes up our societies. Jung takes us to see also how literature uses these archetypes to transmit messages effectively, as the receptors in our brains will be ready to understand it through that collective unconscious he defined.
In “Bartleby the Scrivener” we can find the use of archetypes in the illustration of a character that defiantly refuses to continue on with his life as it was. The narrator, an unnamed lawyer from “Wall Street”, to proofread and copy documents, hired Bartleby. At first he is a model employee, very diligent with his work, always on time,
Professor Samyn
WIS
March 21, 2015
“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
The development of our complex modern society has taken shape first in the imagination of its members who, through the establishment of a collective unconscious, build a set of rules and guidelines for survival and perpetuation. The Greeks, masters of many social advances in their time, used their gods as examples to imitate or be wary of interchangeably, demonstrating an understanding of the perpetual duality of human life. Other civilizations developed their own figures or models and even imitated each other when beneficial to the advancement of their purposes.
Carl Jung shapes these figures, in his theory of the mind, as archetypes, universal psychological tools that the collective unconscious utilizes to somehow transmit and perpetuate social arrangements. These archetypes play a role in society as it keeps it together, assigning a role to its members. This is a somewhat chosen role by the individual who, while not in complete control of its influences has in most cases complete autonomy to decide on the particular decisions of what to do with the learned behaviors. While archetypes seem to be universal they are certainly not universally defined, thus the duality of mythological gods, superheroes and any other representation of humanity. There is a duality that makes us human beings, and how we deal with that duality is what makes up our societies. Jung takes us to see also how literature uses these archetypes to transmit messages effectively, as the receptors in our brains will be ready to understand it through that collective unconscious he defined.
In “Bartleby the Scrivener” we can find the use of archetypes in the illustration of a character that defiantly refuses to continue on with his life as it was. The narrator, an unnamed lawyer from “Wall Street”, to proofread and copy documents, hired Bartleby. At first he is a model employee, very diligent with his work, always on time,