Moby Dick

We technically are supposed to have only one blog entry about Melville’s short stories, but I can’t help that there were two big, very different aspects of “Bartleby the Scrivener” that caught my interest. The first was Bartleby’s motivation. The second is the motif of food.

The narrator reveals to us about half-way through “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street” that he believes food and personality are intertwined. He tells us about the ginger nut cakes that Bartleby lives on, and asks, “What is ginger? A hot spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all.” He suggests that food consumed and behavior should somehow be related, and he stands by this in describing his other employees.

It begins with Turkey. Turkey, who is drunk after dinner, smells of “eating-houses,” and reminiscent of a turkey in both looks and behavior, is often described by our narrator as “bland” in the morning. Bland like the flavor of turkey.

Next is Nippers. Nippers may not have a food name, but he is still very much a part of the lawyer’s food world. Nippers suffers from severe indigestion, and is described as having a “brandy-like disposition.”

Then there is Ginger Nut. Ginger Nut has a drawer full of various nut shells. He works as the cake and apply purveyor, and every day at noon he eats an apple. Mr. Cutlets, who makes a brief but significant appearance, is a “broad, meat-like man” and his name is “Cutlets!”

Food-related analogies and descriptions prevail in the first half of the short story. In explaining Bartleby’s good work, the lawyer narrator states, “As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion.” Later, after Bartleby has begun to pose a problem for the company and for our narrator, the death the narrator imagines for Bartleby, were he to fire the scrivener, is starvation. The narrator decides against the dismissal, which he says is “delicious self-approval” and a “sweet morsel for [his] conscience.” The narrator continues to contemplate Bartleby, soon coming to the realisation that “He never visited any refectory or eating house.” We now see that the narrator thinks of food as a social activity. Bartleby stays cooped up inside all by his lonesome. He never goes out to eat with friends or family. Bartleby’s starvation, then, can be seen as a sign of his loneliness. He eats only what he needs to survive. He socializes with others only as much as he has to. When Mr. Cutlets invites him to dinner, Bartleby responds “I am unused to dinners,” meaning not only does he eat very little, but he socializes very little, and would not do well at a social gathering.

Bartleby died of starvation in the end. Perhaps what he really died of was loneliness. The narrator describes the dead as he who neither “eats, nor hungers anymore.”

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