When I read that I would need to select one passage to write about for this blog post I immediately knew which one I would choose. I chose the last line of the story, “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” This simple four word line brings together all the emotion from the story for the final conclusion. As I was reading “Bartleby, The Scrivener A Story of Wall Street” I felt an amazing amount of frustration at the situation Herman Melville found himself in with Bartleby. At reading the conclusion of the story it was like all that emotion was released and it really felt as if the story was resolved.

            Now, to look at the language, there isn’t much to look at but there is much to say. The word “humanity” sums up the whole meaning of the story. Bartleby’s behavior was certain odd and it was his odd behavior that kept me reading but what was more important about the story was how Melville reacted to his behavior. He was kind and submissive to Bartleby at times even though his behavior was far from normal. Melville had patience and compassion, qualities that I’m not sure any man on Wall Street has today. If a man was to behave this way on Wall Street today he would be arrested immediately and no one would care what happened to him. People would just see him as some crazy loon who decided to squat in a Wall Street office (if he could even gain access to such an office). Today we focus too much on material things and very few of us would show the compassion that Melville did to Bartleby. He tried everything he could think of to help him out. He even went so far as to invite Bartleby, the man who would reveal nothing about himself, to live with him in his own home. But nothing he did was going to change the outcome of the situation. In the end there was nothing else that could be done because there was obviously something wrong with Bartleby and in the end he starved himself to death. Ah the humanity! 

In "A Modest Proposal"  Swift is addressing the poverty problem in Ireland. He says there are so many poor people breeding more poor people who will eventually become beggars and thieves. His solution is that impoverished mothers should nurse their children until they are one year of age and then those one year old children should be sold as food. 

Swift's solution to this very serious problem is not serious at all, it is purely satirical. Swift's purpose for writing the essay was in response to the very poor treatment of the Irish by the English during this time. He mentions that the landlords had already devoured the parents of the children and he means by this that the English treated the Irish so poorly that they might as well be eating them. For more information on the state of Ireland during this time please see this link: http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~lyman/english320/sg-Swift-18thC.htm.

In swifts proposal he outlines why it would be a good thing to eat the children who reached one year of age saying that they weren’t good for anything else and that they weren’t old enough to steal yet. I’m not exactly sure why he mentions Americans in the essay but he claims to have gotten the idea for eating the babies from an American friend in London. One thought I have is that he includes the Americans because they didn’t care about the situation in Ireland or also treated the Irish poorly. I cannot speak that this is fact however. 

Amusing rap rendition of A Modest Proposal. WARNING: Some explicit language.