Delivering the Undeliverable: Bartleby as the Egyptian “Dumb I AM”

• 발행기관: 한국아메리카학회
• 저자명: Yonghwa Lee
• 간행물 정보: 『미국학논집』제57집 1호, 83~104쪽, 전체 22쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기타인문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2025.05.31

국문 초록

This essay examines the trajectory of the narrator’s efforts to understand Bartleby in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” focusing on the images of ancient Egypt. Drawing on Melville’s view of ancient Egypt expounded in his poem, “The Great Pyramid,” this essay contends that to the narrator, Bartleby is like the enigmatic pyramid that is all-powerful yet lifeless and blank. Through his failed attempts to investigate Bartleby from both outside and inside, the narrator learns that Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” is an expression of the desire to just exist freed from constraints of time and space. Just like the pyramid, which is referred to as “this dumb I AM” in “The Great Pyramid,” Bartleby might be beyond human limitations, but he is “dumb.” Only after his physical contact with Bartleby, does the narrator recognize the possibility that Bartleby might have a voice and endeavors to bring him back into the loop of communication by delivering through his imagination the undeliverable letters in Bartleby’s Dead Letter Office.

키워드

“this dumb I AM ” freedom from time and space communication