McGraw-Hill OnlineMcGraw-Hill Higher EducationLearning Center
Student Center | Instructor Center | Information Center | Home
Electronic Resources
Internet Primer
Career Considerations
Summary & Paraphrasing
Avoiding Plagiarism
Study Skills Primer
Basic Concepts
How to Write about Literature
An Introduction to Argument
Exercise in Literary Analysis
American Lit and the Internet
About the Author
Orientation
Key Concepts
Essay Questions
Multiple Choice Quiz
Matching Quiz
Fill in the Blanks
True or False
Links
Texts Online
Feedback
Help Center


The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 2 Book Cover
The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 2, 10/e
George Perkins, Eastern Michigan University
Barbara Perkins, University of Toledo-Toledo


Key Concepts

Bartleby, the Scrivener is a study of the "anti" or "ironic" hero that "declines" to participate in the essential conflicts that set characters apart as either protagonists or antagonists. In Melville's rendering, Bartleby anticipates in his "declinations" the existentialist movement to the extent that he refuses to participate in any act that would render him responsible.

Billy Budd, Sailor is a symbolic work, best understood as an allegory. One of the older forms of narrative in the European tradition, an allegory is a work in which every major motif carries symbolic significance. The elements of conflict are clearly delineated, and complexity is reduced to dualities in which characters align in support of one side or the other. The Roman Catholic Church introduced Christian allegory, first as morality plays, often dramatized on oxcarts maneuvered from village to village as mechanisms of proselytizing.

In Christian allegory, characters represent various stereotypes associated with the Judeo-Christian Bible or the lives of the Christian saints. Melville's Billy Budd lends itself to such an interpretation with Billy Budd, in his purity, a faint "Christ" figure, sacrificed for the good of the community, and John Claggert, the Master-at-Arms, an embodiment of "natural depravity according to nature." "Dansker," Billy's complement, is the "seer" who charts a moral compass, in contrast to the "starry" Captain Vere, who must make the human choice in the service of conflicting "goods."