Bartleby Bumblebee

I can't help but envisioning Bartleby as a bug. He doesn't do anything.. Maybe he just reminds me of Gregor. But I can't picture him as a human.. no one acts like that.

I think my reaction to Bartleby's behavior was the same as the guy who never gave us his name.. the narrator. At first I was confused.. "I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties".. that wasn't exactly my thought process, but I get it. I was just kinda like, well.. too bad.

The next time Bartleby "prefer[ed] not to", mystery man just got angry. It's understandable.. Mystery is paying him money to work; it isn't really an option.

Each time he gets frustrated.. but there is something weird happening.. "...there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me" He is so nonchalantly bold, which makes him interesting.

Mystery man makes a lot of allusions to the Bible. John 15:12 talks about loving everyone as Jesus loves us.. unconditionally. Mystery man tries so hard to do this.. He is stuck between business thinking and moral thinking. He needed to get rid of him, because he was only costing him money. He didn't do anything to help. But on the other hand, something seemed really wrong with him, so who else was going to take him in? To love like Jesus mystery man would have had to take him in.. and he tried! "will you go home with me now-not to my office, but my dwelling..." But Bartleby refused.

Maybe Melville is secretly saying that it is impossible to live like Jesus did... or just really really hard.

Chicken or the Egg?

I love when I get allusions without having to look them up, because, honestly, I won't look it up if I don't get it.

"'Gentlemen,' he said, and unwrapped a drumstick from a piece of newspaper. 'I reverse the order. For Bryan's sake. As a tribute to the Great Commoner. First the chicken, the egg'" (page 126).

This is an allusion to William Jennings Bryan, who was an American politician during this time and died in 1925. He was famous for many things, but in this particular case I think they are talking about the Scopes Trial. Bryan was a fundamentalist, so he didn't believe in evolution. John Scopes, on the other hand, was caught teaching evolution in schools. Bryan fought against Scopes and wanted him persecuted.
Bill and Jake are going to eat the chicken first, then the egg, because that's how Bryan would have wanted it.
I don't really know if this really pertains to the plot or theme. I'm really having a hard time making a connection. They are just having lunch, so the mood is very lighthearted. I mean, Bill is there and Robert is out of the picture, so of course the mood isn't serious. Also, I think they are a little drunk.


P.S. I had some help from my history notes from school last year.