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.

As much as I am intrigued by the countless complexities presented in Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener, I decided to focus specifically on the last paragraph in which the reader, and the lawyer, gains the tiniest bit of perspective on Bartleby’s life prior to his simple existence as an obstinate Scrivener. Just as the narrator wonders, I too wonder whether such a miserable job–burning letters that have been sent to people who have since died or vanished–was the cause of Bartleby’s gradual demise and ultimate descent into possible insanity. Upon the narrator’s discovery of Bartleby’s prior employment, he exclaims,

“Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can nay business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters…”(Melville 29).

The narrator’s assumptions seem perfectly logical to me, however I wonder if he is simply using this small tidbit of knowledge about Bartleby to excuse what really happened to Bartleby, and moreover the narrator’s personal failure in helping Bartleby escape his misery. I am just questioning this idea, because throughout the story the narrator is constantly questioning himself and weighing his obligation to help Bartleby vs. the annoyance of his presence in his office. I’m not sure if this critique holds much ground, but it was just one of my initial reactions to the narrator’s response to Bartleby’s past.

In further examining Bartleby as a dead letter sorter and what dead letters may symbolize I think it is important to note the final line of the story. “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” (Melville 29). In closing the story with this boldly symbolic statement, Melville is obviously trying to emphasize to the reader that Bartleby and his fate are a symbol for the plight of human existence and perhaps the consequences of societal pressures and constraints. And what is Melville trying to say the ultimate consequence and outcome of becoming trapped within the constructs of society…? Well, death of course. I think there is a lot to be said about the message Melville is offering concerning the daily struggles of a man stuck in the repetitious work of middle class America who is constantly subject to the will of others, but that is a whole other discussion. I think that Bartleby’s period of employment at the Dead Letter office symbolizes the nature of Bartleby’s demise. Just as the narrator describes the letters as “on errands of life, these letters speed to death”, Bartleby, on his path towards liberation and freedom via the assertion of his individual will (by “preferring not to”) he has actually initiated his path to death.

The premise of the Dead Letter Office remains somewhat of a mystery to me, but I think it is an interesting way to end the story. Melville could’ve simply concluded with Bartleby’s death, but he decided to provide the reader and the narrator with some perspective into Bartleby’s mysterious existence with the Dead Letter Office. Ah Melville! Ah humanity!

Besides having a completely different subject, I found that Bartleby the Scrivener also differed from Moby Dick in its narration style.  Ishmael is very present at the beginning of Moby Dick, but his voice becomes increasingly disembodied as the novel continues.  The unnamed lawyer narrator remains present throughout Bartleby, and readers follow him through all his various interactions with other characters.

Ishmael does not interact much with other characters after he arrives on the Pequod.  While his voice continues to inform the reader of what is happening on the ship, we rarely get an actual glimpse of him.  He appears briefly in such chapters as The Monkey-Rope and A Squeeze of the Hand.  Yet he still does not enter into dialogue with anyone aboard the ship.  The most dialogue that Ishmael engages in during the part of the book that he is on the ship happens when he is having a flash forward to later describing the Town-Ho’s story to friends in Lima.  Ishmael as a body aboard the ship seems to disappear from the story entirely until the Epilogue.  He does not even alert the reader that he was one of the men on Ahab’s boat until after the ship has sunk.

The narrator of Bartleby has conversations with numerous other people in the text, and often uses the pronoun “I” to describe his personal thoughts and feelings.  His constant flow of opinions and theories regarding Bartleby’s condition contrasts sharply with the reader’s lack of insight into Bartleby’s mind.

I enjoyed reading a piece by Melville where the narrator remained consistent for the duration of the plot.  The narrator was as reliable as Bartleby was unreliable as an employee.

I really enjoyed reading this short story. Bartleby’s indifference and passivity reminded me somewhat of Mersault’s from Albert Camus’s The Stranger, as well as Peter Gibbons’s from the movie Office Space. Being assigned to the “Literary Allusions and Other Moments of Literature” category of our Moby Dick blog, I was intrigued by Melville’s reference to Cicero and why the narrator has a plaster-of-paris bust of the Roman philosopher in his office. In addition to being a philosopher, Cicero was also a lawyer and politician. Despite his opposition to the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, his political positions were inconsistent and tended to shift in response to changes in the political climate. While this may be a very subtle reference, I feel that Melville makes it to draw a parallel between Cicero and the narrator, as well as emphasize the narrator’s inability to take a firm position on how to handle the strange character of Bartleby. In addition to this allusion, Melville sums up the narrator’s character in the third paragraph of the story; he writes,

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best… I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause… All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. (Melville 5)

Melville characterizes the narrator as a “safe man” who always takes the path of least resistance. While the narrator tries to learn about Bartleby and does seem to ponder about his situation, he finds it much easier to leave Bartleby behind and fend for himself. He would like to be charitable and selfless, but he never goes out on a limb to help Bartleby. He never actually asks Bartleby if there is anything that he can do for him; he can only ask Bartleby to do things for him.

References:

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

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