Disease and Decease in "Bartleby, the Scrivener". A Story of Wall-Street

Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Amerikanistik), course: Advanced Academic Writing I, language: English, abstract: As postmodern critics have stated, the rise of capitalism entailed negative consequences on the individual being. Society turned into a crisis of self-identification and still many people are dealing with the repercussions. As a result, low self-esteem and loss of identity lead to an increasing number of mental disorders. Critics like Deleuze and Guattari even argued for a link between capitalism and schizophrenia, claiming that “schizophrenia arises from the decoding processes characteristic of capitalism” (Holland 66). “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, presents this serious conflict between the individual and society. In the following I will argue that society is in a deranged state. Moreover, society stigmatizes Bartleby as being mentally ill which causes his social limitation and leads in consequence to his act of passive resistance. Therefore, this paper will deal with two major issues: The conflict between the individual being and the social structure will be illustrated in detail. I will use Marxist terminology to help illustrate the main points of the capitalist exploitation of the individual worker.