Moby Dick

Bartleby the scrivener’s case is an interesting one. Devoid of information concerning his past, except for the brief ‘rumor’ offered in the epilogue (which truthfully, seems superfluous) we must take him at face value. It is arguable, although ultimately unimportant, whether Bartleby’s politely disagreeable behavior is firmly in place for the discovery by the narrator, or whether the narrator’s own admissions of Bartleby’s responses gives him permission to expand his behavior. What their relationship becomes is the opposite of what it seems- it appears that Bartleby is the one who refuses to do anything, removing himself from life, while the lawyer, filled with conviction, struggles for a way to help him. However, it is Bartleby who has convictions, and the lawyer who ends up a passive participant in his own life. Part of the narrator’s passivity comes from a good place- he, unlike the other characters with agency in the short story, feels compassion for Bartleby, and maybe admiration for Bartleby’s assured attitude. He relies on the “divine injunction: ‘A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.’ Yes, this it was that saved me…charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle” (9). He makes the effort to accommodate Bartleby, and it seems less because he feels like he has no choice but because he finds Bartleby curious and assured.

However, social pressure confounds their relationship, stripping the narrator of his passivity as two pressures, filled with conviction, force him to make a decision. What finally gets to the narrator is the realization that Bartleby’s presence and his own acquiescence is “scandalizing my professional reputation” (10). Bartleby’s conviction, so at odds with the pressurized nature of social convention, disturbs those who have the power to disrupt the narrator’s attempt at charity: “At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept in my office. This worried me very much.” (10). Lacking the same charitable character of the narrator, but possessing a different (and more pathetic) sort of passivity, the new owners of Bartleby’s building force him out.

Bartleby’s end begs the question of what could have been had social pressures not influenced the narrator towards complete avoidance of Bartleby. It seems that social pressure, not Bartleby, really pushed the narrator away. His actions are symptoms of his passive nature; even if he feels he is doing something right, if others do not agree with him he is wont to create no disruptions, no rifts in his life. I think he could imagine himself as Bartleby in another life.

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