Which of the following is not an accurate description of Melville's style in this particular passage?
I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading -- no, not (Line) even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his 5 pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall, I was quite sure he never visited any refectory1 or eating house, while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went anywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless, indeed, that was the case at present – that he had declined telling who he 10 was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health. And more than all I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid -- how shall I call it? -- of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my 15 tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his. Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered 20 that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness revolving all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of 25 misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor 30 common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body, but his body did not pain him -- it was his soul that suffered and his soul I could not reach. 1 Refectory = room for eating, as at a rooming-house
A Melville avoids simple sentences.
B Melville uses compound and complex sentences.
C Melville uses past tense to suggest Bartleby's passivity.
D Melville's irony underscores the inane nature of Bartleby's life.
E Melville's subtle use of humor belies Bartleby's tragic situation.