Moby Dick

I just finished reading “Bartleby, the Scrivener” for the second time (as I read it once last year in my freshman writing seminar), and have WAY too much to say about the fascinating tale of the man who “preferred not to.” I actually just reread the response I had to write for my freshman writing seminar and found that I focused on the idea of Bartleby endearing himself (if you can call it that) to the narrator by constantly being there. In this way, we can compare the narrator’s obsession with Bartleby to Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick, as Ahab was constantly reminded of Moby Dick by the presence of his substitution leg. Additionally, both characters refer to Bartleby and Moby Dick as their fates, respectively. Anyway, I just wanted to briefly connect this story with Moby Dick before moving on completely from the novel…
Though it was hard for me to decide what to focus on in this post on “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” I think I will decide on identity in the story (as that seems a good foundation to start with before tackling the other motifs). I spent the whole reading of the story underlining all of the points in which the narrator defines Bartleby in some specific, pointed way (by using certain adjectives, comparing him to certain great figures and even office furniture…), only to realize that the narrator hardly defines himself in such specific terms, besides to say that he is “a rather elderly man” and “a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best” (5 on the pdf file). We never even learn the narrator’s name. How curious that we have so many more defining terms for the character whom the narrator knows nothing about as opposed to the character whom the narrator knows everything about (the narrator himself)! Also, I find it interesting that the narrator “has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best,” when Bartleby proceeds to challenge that conviction by doing essentially nothing and having what seems to be a rather empty existence that culminates in his death (or suicide, as he starves himself).
Anyhow, here are some of the phrases that the narrator uses to describe Bartleby:
•    “a sort of innocent and transformed Marius among the ruins of Carthage!” (14)
•    a “Son of Adam” (along with the narrator himself) (14)
•    “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!” (Bartleby’s first appearance) (8)
•    compares him to “pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero” in his (Bartleby’s) lack of ordinary humanity (9)
•    “a lost column of some ruined temple” (18)
•    “more a man of preference than assumptions” (haha) (18)
•    “a mill stone” (17)
•    “a bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic” (17)
•    “harmless and noiseless as…these chairs” (20)
And, of course, there are many other passages describing Bartleby, as he is the focus of Melville’s short story. Also, we cannot forget that the narrator refers to Bartleby in the same way as the story’s title, as a “scrivener.”
First of all, we have to take into account that all of these descriptions belong purely to the narrator, and perhaps almost purely to his imagination. He knows nothing about Bartleby’s life other than the parts he has witnessed, and even in those he cannot probe very far into Bartleby’s interior. So, we cannot necessarily trust the narrator’s descriptions of Bartleby. The narrator does shape a certain picture of the curious scrivener, returning to similar imagery to describe him, such as that of Bartleby as the last component of some kind of wreck (“the ruins of Carthage,” “a ruined temple,” “a bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic,” this last one harkening again back to Moby Dick, even though they were in the Pacific at the time of the wreck). The theme of inanimate objects reoccurs, as well, in the narrator’s descriptions of Bartleby (a chair, a column, a piece of wreck, the bust of Cicero, a mill stone). We see why the narrator pities Bartleby (because he is alone in a terrible wreck of a world- if we want to go that far, or just alone in the terrible wreck of his own existence?) but cannot seem to approach him or really want to try to overcome him (because you cannot reason with a non-human- you cannot tell a chair to leave and never come back).
Sorry for jumping around so much, but one last comment about Bartleby in the narrator’s eyes, on how the latter compares the former to the bust of Cicero that sits in the office. I did some Wikipedia research and found that Cicero’s “career as a statesmen was marked by inconsistencies and tendencies to shift his position in response to changes in the political climate” (just type in “Cicero” to the Wikipedia search bar to find this information). This picture of Cicero starkly opposes the one we get of Bartleby as remaining mostly constant despite his change of situation (he occupies the same office after its former occupants leave; he stares at the wall in the office and the prison alike). Bartleby himself even states, “I would prefer not to make any change at all” (24). Also according to Wikipedia, Cicero “articulated an early, abstract conceptualization of rights,” something that Bartleby seems to stress with his behavior. He would “prefer not to,” so he does not. It is his right as a human. Bartleby’s death (his suicide, rather, his death-by-choice) can be seen as an abuse of these human rights (“Ah, humanity!”). I feel that Bartleby spends the whole story (inadvertently? the world may never know…) challenging the narrator’s idea of humanity, and as Bartleby’s nature grows more perplexing, the narrator grasps harder and harder to define him as something within his own realm of human understanding. Alas, I am hesitant make any conclusions about a narrative as perplexing as Bartleby himself…

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