Moby Dick

The inherent simplicity of the character, Bartleby, is only made so by Melville’s preference to not divulge any of his background or insight into his character.  But it’s that same simplicity that allows for any number of contemplations on the meaning of Bartleby’s story (“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street”), thus making it actually rather complex.  Bartleby is seemingly homeless, as he takes up residence in our narrator’s office, and his disinterest in human interaction leads one to also assume he is mentally ill in some capacity.  But really, we can’t be the least bit certain of any of these inferences.  From another perspective, Bartleby could be representative of all “misunderstood” individuals, of which Melville was one.  Because Melville was not well respected until after his death, it’s likely he was writing a bit of himself into the character of Bartleby.

The “mildness” of Bartleby’s character is at first rather funny, and the narrator even found it “not only disarmed [him], but unmanned [him], as it were” (Melville 5).  And the other employees he asks for advice on how to deal with Bartleby are equally amusing, especially considering the known invalidity of their statements based on the time of day’s influence on their particular personalities.  As we learn more (while it’s still only a little) about Bartleby’s character, after the narrator discovers he is living in the office, the tale becomes a more tragic and sympathetic one.

What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible!” (6).

Eventually, the suffering soul of Bartleby led to his self-inflicted death—his body ceased preferring to carry its own dead soul around.  While the narrator finds it sad that he did not seemingly have enough money to live elsewhere, he believed the true tragedy of Bartleby to be the terrible lonesomeness that must come with such a residence.  And it was that very solitude that the narrator cannot understand (and which made him greatly pity Bartleby), and which anyone who has not experienced a similar time being so alone could not relate.  But it does seem Melville could relate to Bartleby, and because the story seems a commentary on humanity as a whole, many others understand that lonesomeness as well.  And maybe another reason Melville gave us so little of Bartleby was so all of his “misunderstood” readers could more easily identify (by writing their own life details in) and thus personally make sense of the very flat character.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” http://www.enotes.com/bartleby-scrivener-text/bartleby-scrivener-1

Trackback URI | Comments RSS