Do film versions of written words hold onto the original author’s message or do they give them an injustice? Herman Melville wrote the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A story of wall street” in 1853, narrating a tale of an employee with strange behaviors of a lawyer. In 2001 Johnathan Parker of Parker productions turned that story into a film, “Bartleby.” However, Jonathan Parker makes many changes from the classic original wrote by Herman Melville. Even though there are many differences between the written version and the film version that affect the setting, characterization, and tone between the printed version by Herman Melville and the film version by Parker Productions, the plot remains similar.
In the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A story of wall street” the setting of the story takes place in 1853 in the state of New York. The description of the office is a profitable, lucrative place of business that is upstairs of a building on wall street. The unidentified narrator states that “This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call 'life'” (Meyers, 2017, pp.127). The descriptions of the
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A character that draws the plot of the story, which is about an individual’s strange behavior influences the narrator to write a bibliography about him. In the film version Bartleby is portrayed to have some form of mental illness, and in the short story, he is a just extraordinary character. “I waive the biographies of all other scriveners, for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw or heard of’ (Meyers, 2017. P.126). Though there are many differences between the two versions, both Herman Melville and Jonathan Parker kept to the same plot, a story of a strange encounter, to express their amazement by such odd