Isolation Effects on Melville and Hawthorne Characters

The effects of isolation of characters in the Melville and Hawthorne stories are relatively the same. Bartleby, Beatrice, the lawyer, Parson Hooper, and Hester to name a few. The isolation all felt by these characters is being shut off from the world for being different or making different choices in life.

Bartleby is a copywriter for a lawyer. He is the type of person that has been looked over and ignored for most of his life. Just thought of as weird and needs to be left alone. When the lawyer asked him to do some work, he said, "I would prefer not to." The lawyer chose to move the business and leave Bartleby in the office where the lawyer found him to be living. This just increases his isolation from human to human contact. As the underlying model in the story is "walls", as suggested by the many walls in the story, he eventually dies walled in a prison, coming full circle with his isolation.

In Hawthorne's stories the effects of isolation are somewhat different. Beatrice feels alone, sheltered from society by her father. Parson Hooper is isolated be emotionally grieving and wearing a black veil to shield him from society. Hester in "The Scarlet Letter" is isolated because of her not knowing who the father is of Pearl, and her husband suddenly showing up with no warning after 2 years.

Isolation affects all the characters in these stories in some shape or form. The question is how and why. It doesn't always happen for the same reasons, or in the same way, as shown in these few stories.

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