The Effect of Family

One thing I noticed from many of the blog posts in Week 1 is how a good portion of the replies mention that there is no immediate connection to the war. What I mean is that many of the students, including myself, noted how we have no family members or friends connected with the war, thus we do not pay as much attention to the goings-on compared to someone who has a family member fighting out there. This immediately reminded me of how the narrator in "Bartleby the Scrivener" mentions how Bartleby has no mentioned family members or friends. That fact could be one of the reasons why Bartleby seems so withdrawn and distant from everything. He really has no care for everything happening around him because all he has in the world is himself. As many people in the classes mentioned, having no connections to the war made them almost ignorant, in a sense. Bartleby has become detracted from society and almost immune to the world around him. I feel it could be due in large part to the fact that he is alone. Had Bartleby had anything in the world other than himself, his situation, attitude and overall motivations may have changed. He probably would have been more in contact with the world and contributed much more than what we are told about. Having re-read the blog posts, I firmly feel that having no family members or friends directly involved with the war has made many people less interested in the happenings and, similarly, having no family and friends made Bartleby completely become detached from the world about him.