Moby Dick

Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” reflects and anticipates important themes from contemporary and following works of literature.  It is Bartleby’s absurd refusal to do anything in the office that resonates across other stories.

I am reminded first of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, whose unnamed narrator refuses to submit to the logical positivist philosophy of nineteenth century Europe.  He has no use for logic and insists on rebelling against it, even to the point of hurting himself.  He wishes to use his life as an example of the faults of logic and reason; he wants to show that a highly enlightened and intellectual man can turn against all considerations of reasonable human existence.  He argues instead for irrationality, and an open understanding of humanity’s inherently masochistic nature.  I think the underground man’s perspective of the futility of science and reason reflects Melville/Ishmael’s musings in Moby Dick. Both narrators hope to show us the limitations of these things.  The underground man uses a metaphor of being up against a brick wall when confronting nature, and he insists he will at the very least spit on that wall. Moby Dick might be called a great deal of spit.  I think it is unlikely that Bartleby is nearly as spiteful as the underground man, but we cannot be too sure.  We hardly glimpse his personality.  Certainly there are parallels.

Another author I’m reminded of is Franz Kafka, who came decades after Melville.  Particularly I am reminded of “The Hunger Artist,” which is about a man in a circus who deliberately starves himself.  This is his act, and the crowds eventually stop finding him entertaining.

I think all of these stories reflect a predicament of modern society, whose work environments are now very similar to Bartleby’s.  I think all three of these authors are shocked and fascinated at how dehumanized people can become by the nature of their work.

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