Moby Dick

To me, the story of Bartleby the Scrivener mirrors that of Moby Dick in more than a few ways. In my last post (or comment, I can’t remember) I talked about how Moby Dick would have been a very different, and lass powerful allegory, had Starbuck followed his gut and killed Ahab. In the same vein, had Bartleby accomplished something (other than the interpretation that he achieved inner peace or something) with his increasingly frequent refusals, the story would have been significantly less thought provoking. Bartleby’s death, like that of the Peaquod’s crew, brings the story to an appropriate head, and serves as a catalyst for interpretive debate.

Another similarity between the two tales is the presence of three hyperbolized “mates.” In Moby Dick, the mates are true mates: Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck. In the short story they are Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby. In both yarns, the mates have distinctive characteristics that act as guides for the development of the story. Without the backdrop of the unique personalities of Stubb and Flask, the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab would not have been as recognizably deep as it was. Similarly, without the faults and blunderings of Turkey and Nippers to cast Bartleby’s early performance into stark contrast with theirs, the narrator would not have taken to him so. We can even interpret their names in a similar manner: Turkey is a bit of an old turkey, and Nippers is a young and ambitious busybody; Stubb tokes up and Flask gulps down. Bartleby and Starbuck have the normal names and are the more central to the story of their respective counterparts.

Finally, both works are clearly representative of higher issues. Bartleby can be read as a rant against the the mundanity of office work; a critique of America’s path to corporate mechanization; or even a Marxist manifesto. Moby, as we well know has a thousand possible readings…

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