r "shattered rainbow" (Perrine 1001). The play ends with Tom wishing that Laura will blow out her mountaindles. Williams uses the symbolism of literature to indicate that all too often each of us chooses darkness everyplace light, escape over fulfillment. Literature allows the ambiguity of our daily lives to come forth with brilliance.
As the previous examples suggest literature can help push us past depression or even despair. In Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener", Bartleby is presented as a man who has been reduced to the formulaic phrase, "I'd prefer not to" (Perrine 466). Employed as a copier, Bartleby refuses to do as his employer asks. Asked to work, he always indicates that this is not what he wishes to do.
Eventually, the boss feels forced to let Bartleby go from his job. Next, he is forced to perk up Bartleby physically escorted off the premises. Yet the vote counter's clemency has been stirred by Bartleby's condition. When Bartleby is sent to live in the Tombs, the teller asks the local grub-man to feed him. Melville concludes the story by showing the teller haunted by both Bartleby's wasted life and witless death. He is the one who stumbles upon Bartleby's corpse. Here Melville indicates that one of the strengths of literature is that it can move us toward greater compassion and empathy. The narrator tries to disengage himself of Bartleby, but in the end he realizes that he and Bartleby and charity are one (Perrine 484). When the grubman asks the narrator if Bartleby can live without dining, the narrator sadly responds that Bartleby now does live without dining and that, yes, he is hypnoid "with kings and counselors" (Perrine 483). Melville indicates that death is the great leveler. Now Bartleby is asleep with all who have lived before him. The amazing strength of this short story is that it bestows hauteur upon one of the seemingly most insignificant of men. Oddly, Melville's eulogy for Bartleby that he sleeps now "with kings and counsel
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