Author: Cody Santana

Cody Santana

10/17/20

ENG 2001 O525

                             The Spirit of Perverseness

               In the two stories we will be discussing today which are Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” and Melvilles “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”we have two prominent characters which both have a desire to achieve something greater and in many ways that makes them alike, but they also have a lot of characteristics which separate them, and these are shown through how they attempt to each achieve their individual goals, and how each of their decisions in this pursuit effects the other characters around them in each of their stories. I believe both these characters share one common characteristic that will be the main theme of the essay which is defined by Poe the writer of the Black Cat the ‘Spirit of Perverseness”. His definition is “”What makes people do things they know are bad for themselves”. A very simple way to define such a complicated topic but where does this relate to our two characters? Each of these characters are trying to achieve their goals by doing things that are ultimately bad for their own wellbeing, the difference between the two characters is that one of them we know what their end goal is while the other character we will have to take a deeper dive to even try to piece together what they want to achieve in the story. 

              In the story written by Kafka “The Hunger Artist” we see a man who is not named (so we will just call him Hunger Artist) being used as a circus act of sorts. He is essentially known as the Hunger Artist, a man who starves himself for several weeks at a time. He is also monitored and locked within a cage. People come out to see the hunger artist in his cage just to see what a man who doesn’t eat anything for so long looks like. He is a very popular attraction for the circus and as such the people who run the circus want to keep him maintained. They give him a strict time period where he can and cannot eat. The Hunger Artist wants to surpass 40 days, it is his ultimate goal to break his own record, but the people who run the show won’t allow him. This always infuriates him and his way of retaliating he just doesn’t speak, which heavily affects the way the show works because when people come to see him they like to talk with him in the hopes of their questions being answered. Without him speaking the show is more or less just people staring at a hungry man. This man lives and breaths the spirit of perverseness. His own goals derive from something he very much knows could kill him down the line.

              In Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story on Wall Street” we have Bartleby, who isn’t the main character per say, but is very much the center of the story. When he first starts working at the lawyers office as a scrivener he is very efficient at his job, gets things done very quick and is quiet, and he is not in anyone’s way. But over time he begins to just stop doing his work, whenever he gets asked to do something he simply replies “I would prefer not to” or “I would rather not”. Even when he gets fired he comes to work and just kinda sits around and gets in everyone’s way. Eventually the lawyer tries to help him but is not met with a good response so he ends up getting Bartleby arrested and sent to jail. Even when he is locked away he continues to refuse to do what anyone says, he even refuses to eat the food given to him when asked to eat it which leads to his eventual death in the story. Now there are a lot of things to cover here but what i want to look at is how Bartleby shows his own spirit of perverseness. He simply chooses not to listen to anyone and pretty much all the time it’s to his disadvantage, he gets fired, sent to jail, and then dies because of his actions. I am certain that Bartleby knows he shouldn’t be doing this, but there has to be something that drives him to do all these nonsensical things.

                          These two characters both have shown to embrace the spirit of Perverseness without knowing it, they both live their lives doing things they know will hurt them in the long run. But what makes these two characters take such drastic actions? What is it that makes them so similar yet so different. Now that we know both their stories let’s take a closer look at both of the characters together rather than separately to figure out the unifying factors of these characters. Firstly let’s talk about how Bartleby and The Hunger Artist are similar, As we have stated they are both very similar in the fact that they are both willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want even if that means it affects them negatively. In The Hunger Artists case to get what he wants it means sacrificing his hunger, which most people would complain if they didn’t eat for the day and he goes without eating for around 40 days in consecutive intervals. In the case of Bartleby the Scrivener he simply doesn’t do his job which costs him his job and ultimately his very life. Now let’s delve into what makes these characters so different. Starting again with The Hunger Artist unlike Bartleby who is very quiet and only speaks when necessary, The Hunger Artist is a rather friendly person and is willing to talk to people, it’s what I believe to be one of the things that keeps him going while he is going through one of his fasting periods, it’s usually when he doesn’t get what he wants is when he becomes quiet and keeps to himself. 

                  Bartleby is almost the exact opposite in this case, he’s completely quiet regardless if he gets what he wants or doesn’t, based on the text he’s a person who is very hard to read, he doesn’t show too much emotion in just about any conversation within the story, most of the time when he does talk it’s usually just one word or at most a simple phrase which is usually just “I would rather not” or “I would prefer not to”. These two phrases give us another detail about Bartleby, he’s not a very motivated person, yet at the same time he is so adamant about not doing the things that he is told to do that it makes you wonder what he truly wants.Since the story doesn;t directly tell us why he’s doing these crazy things it’s up to the reader to take his actions presented to us and make our own theories based on that information. With that being said let’s take a look at his more memorable actions and try to glean what it could all mean for Bartleby. For me there are 3 moments that Bartleby truly shows his character, and in each instance he does the same thing but it’s the situations that make the difference. The first one is when the Lawyer one day during work asks Bartleby to make some copies of a document which prior to this was an excellent employee suddenly decides he doesn’t want to, he responds to the lawyers request by saying “I would prefer not to” and walks away, the lawyer asks him again and he responds with the same phrase, the lawyer figures he’s in a bad mood and walks away. The second instance is during a meeting one of the employees asks Bartleby if he could quickly make some copies that are needed, Bartleby in front of everyone in that meeting says “I would rather not” and proceeds to walk away leaving everyone in the meeting astonished. The final instance I’d like to point out is when he’s in jail refusing to eat his food to the point where he ends up dying because of it. These three instances to me tell me that Bartleby seems to want more in life, he settles for the things in life he is presented with but he got the sudden realization that this simple office job life is not what he wanted and from that point onward did only what he wanted to do.

                    Through the Spirit of Perverseness we have taken a look at two characters that on the surface seem very different. We have a man that we could only go by as The Hunger Artist and Bartleby the scrivener of a lawyer’s office located on wallstreet. They both live very different lives, one can be described as one big circus act and the other a stance against corporate America. While they were both different they were very much the same through the Spirit of Perverseness. They both did things in their lives that each affected their overall well being negatively, but they did it because they both felt they were doing the right thing for themselves, and that is what I have gleaned from both of them as human beings. Their spirits live through Perverseness.