Isolation In Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'Bartleby'

Over time, the largest contributor of societal breakdown, isolation, has prompted social incompetence between friends and family; of which is derived from post-traumatic events and/or current events. There have been numerous examples of isolation throughout time such as Bartleby, situations in school, as well as my life as an individual. If closed cases of isolation in society were to increase, would you feel impelled to socialize? Is that not why society is spelled as it is, because without socialization, society would be meaningless.

In Bartleby, Ralph Waldo Emerson knew the true meaning of isolation, and had comprehensively shown how society would stand with isolation. Throughout the story, Bartleby was isolated, both from his co-workers and from nature. His past life clarifies the reason for his
isolation; working at a dead letter office could lead to depression and furthermore isolation.
However Emerson used Bartleby’s isolation as a plot to express the narrators true feelings toward Bartleby. The narrator never faithfully cared for Bartleby, and was only favorable
to Bartleby for his own benefit. It is not out of the realm of possibility that the narrator purposely isolated Bartleby from nature, although it is unknown why. Emerson, the center of transcendentalism, is known for embedding nature into his writing, as seen in Bartleby. Bartleby is presumed to have had a strong connection with nature prior to his isolation, throughout the story, he was continuously separated from nature, especially during work due to the fact that he was confined to a cubicle, in addition was living in an office building. Bartleby was also a fantastic representation of humanity. Humanities stability relies heavily on nature, and just as Bartleby, without a connection with nature, he lost hope in humanity, and society would soon collapse. Isolation is everywhere, but we do not notice it completely, even in our school system, there is isolation.

In the past year 19.6% of high school students in the US report being bullied at school, bullying is known to lead to student isolation. Students isolate themselves for many reasons that go from being an outcast, to having a mental/learning disability. Prejudice and discrimination condemn 1.5 million people with learning disabilities to lifelong isolation. These specific students suffer from pervasive discrimination which can range from simply being ignored to an assault occurring. Research shows that 9 out of 10 students with learning disabilities will not be successful and continuously be isolated from society. Isolation has a much more substantial impact on a student, not just with their grades and success rate, but on their self-esteem as well. Throughout my high school career, I have seen many students who have either isolated themselves or have been isolated, due to problems such as a death in the family or a friend, have recently moved from a different school, and even a bad home life. Students tend to isolate themselves from their parents as well. This type of isolation can be observed through events such as refrained communication, disrespect, and disobedience. If you as a parent witness these attributes, act quickly, you may not be given another chance. Your child may suffer long term manifestation such as complications between friends or family, depression, PTSD, and possibly even attempt suicide. Children and students always have the choice to seek help within the school, however most do not because they are either scared or nervous. Schools offer counseling and psychiatric help, as well as setting meetings with a parent or guardian if necessary. The aforementioned techniques can be very successful if applied, but on average, less than a tenth of these students will seek assistance.

In recent events, including my life, isolation has been a recent occurrence (more outside my life). Everyone experiences isolation sometime in their life, whether it is as basic as going to school and your friend is absent or as complicated as going to school and having no friends. A majority of my encounters with isolation have been insignificant in my current life, I have been fortunate to have plenty of friends and have never been neglected at school, but some do not have that luxury. I have been in isolating scenarios such as going to birthday parties of which I normally would not go and not having anyone to talk to, or maybe working with someone I did not particularly like. It has been proven that social isolation has lead to a greater risk for health issues, whether mental issues such as depression, or true health issues such as heart disease. Ironically however, loneliness has not been linked with any death risks, despite being connected to isolation itself. My own encounters of isolation cannot even compare to some scenarios that other people may face in their lifetime. Believe it or not, even adults are exposed to isolation in their life at some point, in some situations they feel as if they are not fit to be in normal society and they rebel, a perfect example of this type of people is ISIS. Constituents of this group have separated themselves from society, furthermore at the same time attempting to destroy it. These people do not just arise for no reason, there is always an underlying source of these behaviors. Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria all have backgrounds of isolation, and conceiving from complications with family. Their families did not support their decisions and were very disapproving, this being the overall cause of rebellion.

It is proven that everyone will experience isolation in their life, but the power that it has on your life depends on you as an individual. Isolation will always be present in todays society because there will always be people who are not cut out to blend into todays groups. Nature and society live in harmony together, if one is isolated from the other, the other cannot stand alone, and the system fails. Even in todays society, when things are at their worst, mankind has united to form scenes that are as beautiful as nature itself.