Bartleby and Peyton: Lonely Islands - Essay Example

Though Bartleby and Peyton have different lives since Peyton is richer and with a family, while Bartleby has no family or friends, they are both lonely islands. They share the same mental isolation due to their limited social relationships and fragile, chaotic environments.

Bartleby and Peyton share an identical sense of mental isolation because of their limited social relationships. Melville shows that self-reliance means total social isolation. Bartleby works inside a cramped room, with only walls and papers to view on. One can only imagine the lonely life of a scrivener, whose work consists of endless copies and with no actual human relationships formed or strengthened in the process. As a result, the repetitive work must have killed Bartleby’s spirit. Soon, the loneliness deactivates his mind until all he can say is that he would rather not. For me, the meaning of this phrase, “I would prefer not to,” is that he resists connecting with other people as the reaction to the world that no longer has meaning for him.

The world rejected him; he rejects it back. Essentially, Bartleby’s humanity is reduced to nothingness. Peyton also has a limited social world. Despite coming from a rich family, it seems that “circumstances of an imperious nature” could refer to different social conditions that lead to him being more detached from the social world than usual (Bierce). Because of this detachment, it is easy for Peyton to give way to delusions, especially the delusion of escaping his captors. For me, it is particularly bitter to read a story of escape and to later realize that it is only imagined by a less courageous man. The main impact of mental isolation for Peyton is too much dreaming and too little action; hence, it leads to his demise.

Melville and Peyton also show that the fragility and turmoil of their environments have a direct influence on people’s mental states. Bartleby is a scrivener for a lawyer involved in bonds and mortgages, or in short, the affairs of the wealthy. He works at Wall Street and to some extent; his life should be something to be aspired for. After all, he makes a decent living in the center of world commerce. Despite the appearance of material security, I believe that this materialist culture is also a bane to Bartleby. He must have received an insight into the world of materialism. Perhaps he died within because he realized that outside, there is no life when life revolves around making money only. Humans are means and not ends; and when he says he would rather not to, he also declines being used as another means to these materialist ends. Peyton also suffers from a fragile state, because his context is war. With his imagination, it becomes easy for him to be gullible to agents. Thus, their environments both destroyed them too.