Laughable Slippage in Herman Melville's Bartleby The Scrivener - A Deconstructionist Theory - LIT 500 Theory

Laughable Slippage in Bartleby, The ScrivenerCOLLAPSE

          The Deconstructionist theory of slippage centers around the idea that words many have many different meanings in accordance with reader perception as well as other words it is linked. Words are signifiers and the signified meanings are not black and white (Rivkin & Ryan). This grey area is slippage. Pages 33-34 from Herman Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener is both a classic, and a humorous example of slippage.

But ere parting with the reader, let me say, that if this little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, ... I can only reply, that in such curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor which came to my ear a few months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon which basis it rests I can not tel. But in as much this vague report has not been without a certain suggestive interest to me it may prove the same with some others and so I will mention it. (page 33-34)

         

          The narrator is attempting to describe Bartleby but gets lost in his words. Each words he uses is relying upon another to make sense creating a chain of words that in effect say nothing at all. When I read this passage I imagined Johnny Carson reading this as a monologue possibly in the 70's.  It makes no sense. One signifier leads to another and so on and so forth with no relief.

         

          What makes this concept useful is it gives a picture of what many business meetings sound like. A series of professional words attached to one another creating a chain. Persons will oft use big words, or extra words in an attempt to sound smarter or more professional and this is a prime example of how that can backfire via slippage.

         

          I chose to apply slippage to this particular passage versus parole or opposites because slippage modifies sound and the sound of the voice was important for an audible portrait in this passage.

Resources:

Melville, Herman. Bartelby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street.1856. Web. 25 Apr 2016.

Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Print.