Comparing Bartleby The Scrivener 'And A White Heron'

Issue of Identity. Loss of Identity in American Literature.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others” Mahatma Gandhi
In this essay I will discuss the issue of identity in two different Short stories: “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Meville and “ A white Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett.
The period between the Civil War in America and the outbreak of the Great War in Europe in 1914 may be turned in the history of prose fiction the Era of the Short Story. Writers from that period discovered how to exploit the American past and the American landscape, their works became powerful instruments for defining and developing
The suspense and confusion builds as we learn that Bartleby remains at the office, even when its occupants leave, he continues his wall-staring, resistant behavior even when a new law practice moves in. at one moment Bartleby is taken to prison and he doesen’t even put up a fight when the police took him. Bartleby is presented as a victim of society.
In the end Bartleby refuses to eat and subsequently starves to death on prison, he rejects normal human interaction. By just preferring not to live anylonger, Bartleby announces his individuality in an ultimately fatal, dramatic way: if he cannot live as he “prefers” to, he doesen’t want to live at all. The closure statement : “ Ah Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” transforms this small story about one strange man in one about all of humanity.
The story provides an exploration into such universal issues of the human experience as alienation, passivity, nonconformity and psychological imprisonement. Bartleby has become a robotic copist in a world surrounded by walls: he has lost his identity because of the environement, because of non-comunication. He is a victim of society for whom there can’t be salvation. Loss of identity, lack of communication- led him to death. Meville uses Bartleby to represent the American ideal of freedom of choice then creates tension through restriction of that
The entire story Sylvia is in a struggle between nature and civilization. In fact is all about telling or not telling the secret: if she tells it, she will no longer be a part of the nature; if she doesn’t, it is almost of no importance as she cannot stop time and the changing of things. She chooses a third option: to keep silence, but by doing that , she remains outside time, outside history.
The end of the story is representative for her loss of identity, she is “ this lonely country girl”, she belongs to neither of the worlds. Sylvia chooses interaction with the nature instead of human interaction as Bartleby chooses to die in “Bartleby the Scrivener” and get rid of all human contact . The protagonists from these two short stories are defined by their final decisions!
As a conclusion I can say that these two writers understood that at the heart of human experience lies an essential yearning for self-definition and self-understanding. Developing a conception of who we are, for what purpose we exist, and how we should live our lives is a basic impulse of human consciousness. The direction of human affairs is inextricably connected to the evolution of our identity. For it is from our identity that intention, action, and social development flow. Identity determines how we see ourselves and conceive our position in the world, how others see or classify us, and how we choose to engage with those around