Bartleby And The Scrivener Analysis

Assumptions are impossible to predict because they happen in the blink of an eye, and guide our thinking. We have no control over our assumptions since they are a natural reaction as we encounter new situations, or people. Both “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby and The Scrivener” recognized that everyone makes assumptions, but they show the danger of jumping to conclusions, and how justifying actions is not helpful in the long run. Our history is the filter that we look at the world through, creating different viewpoints. Our assumptions are controlled by an unconscious bias and can be used to justify actions and make false conclusions. Daily actions influence our life without our knowledge. The narrator, of “Bartleby and the Scrivener”, and Goodman Brown were raised in a world that would manipulate their actions to change an outcome without them realizing. Goodman Brown believed he was raised into “a race of honest men and good Christians” shaping him to be a strong independent Christian man, even though he says

When the narrator is unable to figure out why Bartleby will not work for him he starts to imagine reasons. The narrator decides to conclude that Bartleby must have something wrong with his eyes because one day they “looked dull and glazed.”(Melville 35) The narrator feels that he must have an answer to all his issues and when he is unsure, he creates the answer. Goodman Brown is conflicted by what is real. He can’t be sure that what he has seen is real, but he changes his attitude and the way that he looks at other people. He assumes that everyone he sees walking down the street is part of the cult he finds in the forest. His future turns “miserly unutterable” he “scowl[s] and mutter[s] to himself” more often and slowly turns into someone much the opposite of his old self. (Hawthorne 24) Facts are essential to drawing an accurate conclusion, and assumptions often lead people