Too Many Walls Cause Deviant

A detailed Summary of Too Many Walls Cause Deviant

Why are there so many walls in our lives? Every building has outer-walls that form the perimeter of the foundation. Inside that building there are walls that divide the floor into rooms, and even in each room we put up walls to divide the room to fit its purpose. A wall's purpose is to enclose, divide, or protect, they really do more than this. Do we build all these walls to protect us from the elements, like rain and cold, and to organize our lives better, or because we want to limit our interaction with other social beings and become more individualistic. In the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street," Herman Melville explores the relationship between the individual and society through the use of walls and how his characters react to them. The more walls that are in a person's life the more deviant they become; this isolation and resulting deviant behavior will lead to a tragic downfall.

The narrator of the story describes the office chambers with vivid detail. Through this descriptions we can see who represents society and who is the individual. We can see that there are two windows in the office, both of which face the walls of other buildings. The narrator describes the view as "deficient in what landsc

It is because of the many walls that surround Bartleby, and their isolation that they suggest, that he begins to "prefer not to" do what is required of him. When he first arrives at the office, he writes like he has been without something to write for a long time. He is trying to do what is expected of him; he is trying to conform to society. Yet, he makes this hermitage behind the green screen his home. He never leaves it during the business day and we find out later in the story that he never leaves it at night either. The narrator has placed him here and it is here that he intends to stay, he "would prefer not to make any changes." His hermitage's only view is this window with the wall only three feet from the glass. It is this view of life, which is forced upon him by the narrator, which begins to hypnotize him and cause him to withdrawal from society. He cannot leave his hermitage to "compare papers" and eventually cannot continue to write because this wall beyond the window demands his attentions. He becomes the retreatist in what is called the Structural Strain Theory of deviant behavior. He has the goals of society forced upon him and when he cannot live up to them because of distractions he gives up on attaining the goals and retreats from society. Bartleby becomes an individual because of the walls society has placed before him, but to be truly an individual you have to display some form of deviant behavior.

ape painters call 'life.'" In contrast, one window gave off a white light that came from the sun even though the sun never shined in this window directly; the other window opened to a brick wall that was blackened with age and lack of direct sunlight. This part of th

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Approximate Word count = 1142
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English