literary analysis of bartleby the scrivener

A Summary and Analysis of Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Of Herman Melville’s shorter works, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ has remained the most popular and widely studied. Critics have disagreed over the story’s meaning, with this tale of one man who repeatedly asserts that he ‘would prefer not to’ carry out the orders of his employer inviting a raft of interpretations. Melville (1819-91) wrote ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ in 1853, and it was first published in Putnam’s Magazine later that year.

The various themes of ‘Bartleby’, which is subtitled ‘A Story of Wall Street’, include alienation, capitalism, and non-conformity in an increasingly bureaucratic and regimented world. You can read ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ here before proceeding to the summary and analysis below.

‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ : plot summary

The story takes place in the law office on Wall Street in New York City. The narrator is an elderly lawyer who runs an office with two copyists or ‘scriveners’, whose job it is to copy out legal documents by hand. An office boy also works for him.

The two copyists are referred to by their nicknames: Turkey, a man approaching sixty who appears to be fond of a drink during his lunch hour, and Nippers, a younger and more ambitious man. The twelve-year-old office boy is nicknamed Ginger Nut because he brings spicy cakes to the scriveners.

The narrator decides to hire a third scrivener, and employs Bartleby in the role partly in the hope that the man’s sedate manner will provide a good example to the other two. However, after a few days in the job, Bartleby, when asked to proofread some documents, responds by saying, ‘I would prefer not to.’ Tempted to fire the man on the spot, the narrator is surprised by how calm and unruffled Bartleby is, so keeps him on.

The same thing happens a few days later, with Bartleby responding, once again, with ‘I would prefer not to.’ The narrator challenges him this time, but Bartleby refuses to offer any explanation for his refusal. He calls upon the other two scriveners, and Ginger Nut, to reassure him his request was not unreasonable, and they agree that it was not.

But Bartleby retains his position, regardless, and refuses again the following day; he also refuses to run an errand for the narrator.

When the narrator pops in at his office one Sunday and discovers Bartleby is living in the office, he initially pities him, but then he finds himself repelled by him. He resolves to challenge Bartleby about his life and to dismiss him from the office if he refuses to answer.

But Bartleby announces that he ‘would prefer not to’ be reasonable, and this attitude begins to influence that of the other two scriveners. So the narrator dismisses Bartleby, who refuses to leave.

Reluctant to use physical force or to call the police, he endeavours to ignore Bartleby, who continues to sit in the office even though he doesn’t work there anymore. But word has spread of this recalcitrant ex-employee, and the narrator fears for his professional reputation if he doesn’t evict Bartleby.

So he decides instead to relocate to new premises, and moves everything out of his old office. But shortly after this, a group of people arrive and demand that the narrator come and remove Bartleby, so he goes back to the old office to try to reason with him. He even offers to have Bartleby come and live with him until he has found a new job, but Bartleby declines this offer, too. Giving up on him, the narrator leaves.

The narrator goes on holiday, and when he returns, he discovers from his old landlord who owns the old office that Bartleby has been put in prison. The narrator agrees that this was probably inevitable, given Bartleby’s attitude. When he goes and visits Bartleby in prison, he finds the man is refusing even to eat, and when he returns a few days later, Bartleby is lying dead in the courtyard, facing the wall, having starved himself to death.

‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ : analysis

Melville’s story is a classic example of a work of fiction in which the narrator reveals more about himself than about his titular subject. Although Bartleby is the putative protagonist of the story, it is the elderly narrator, whose initial passivity in the face of Bartleby’s staid non-compliance gives way to pity and compassion towards another human being by the end of the narrative, who is arguably the real subject of ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’.

Certainly, we learn very little about Bartleby, and he acts as an opaque surface which reveals little: less a mirror than a brick wall: indeed, much like the wall which Bartleby faces at work, and the prison wall which he is staring at when he dies. (It’s worth bearing in mind that, happily enough, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ bears the subtitle ‘A Story of Wall Street’.)

Bartleby’s refusal to do his job is always offered, not aggressively, nor yet passive-aggressively, but always with a quiet passivity and calm which unsettles his employer. He may be as discontented as Nippers appears to be (albeit without any of his nervous energy), but we simply cannot say. He is an enigma to the narrator, and to us as a result.

Alongside such passivity, we find, in ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’, the theme of conformity. The story’s setting on Wall Street, the financial centre of the United States, is no accident: the world of finance, law, and business, Melville appears to be suggesting, stifles and restricts the individual, turning everyone into mindless cogs in the machine of industry.

Even the job which appears in the story’s title, ‘scrivener’, involves not writing original content but merely copying existing documents. Bartleby stands out to the narrator because he pushes back against this urge to conform and comply.

Because a scrivener is a kind of writer, numerous critics have viewed Bartleby as an autobiographical portrait. Herman Melville ‘preferred not to’ continue writing the sea stories which had proved hugely popular early in his career, preferring to branch out into more experimental and challenging fiction (including, most famously, Moby-Dick , published a couple of years before Melville wrote ‘Bartleby’ and greeted by a number of hostile and bewildered reviews).

The capitalist machine wants Melville to continue producing more formulaic works which would sell copies and make his publishers lots of money: the system wants to turn him into nothing more than a ‘scrivener’, of sorts. His determination to resist this demand will lead to selling fewer books; in ‘Bartleby’, it will end with the scrivener losing his job and starving himself to death (like many a less successful author before).

Indeed, with its emphasis on the symbolic activity of writing and the ways in which bureaucracy can imprison us into a passive and pointless existence, ‘Bartleby’ can be analysed as a forerunner to the works of twentieth-century writers like Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges.

Indeed, Borges pointed out that Melville’s story anticipates Kafka’s work in ‘the genre of fantasies of conduct and feeling’. ‘Bartleby’ has also been viewed as prefiguring existentialism , with Bartleby offering a neutral ‘no’ to the demand to roll the Sisyphean boulder back up the hill.

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“Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville Literature Analysis Essay

Introduction, philosophical analysis of “bartleby the scrivener”, works cited.

Written in 1853, Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener: A story of Wall Street” portrays the character of Bartleby, a “scrivener” hired to work in the narrator’s law office. Throughout the story, Bartleby’s character changes from a polite, cool and firm scrivener to a ‘difficult-to-understand’ person who refuses to take his tasks at the office by using a simple phrase “I would prefer not to” (Wells 38).

Many scholars have attempted to use different approaches to determine the cause of Bartleby’s character and its real-life implication, including philosophical, religious and ethical analysis of the character. However, it is convenient to analyze the story from a philosophical point of view. For instance, the transcendental ideologies of self-reliance and individual freedom appear to contradict with ethics at the workplace, thereby revealing the philosophical thinking of civil disobedience.

Bruce Michelson says “Bartleby the Scrivener” is a sad but funny pursuit of the understanding of “self” and other people… and is a predicament of human sensitive mind as it considers the demands of modern life. From a philosophical approach, it is clear that Melville’s narrative is a reflection of transcendental ideas of the 18th and 19th centuries. First, it is necessary to define what transcendentalism philosophy entails. According to Stevenson (47), transcendentalism philosophy argues that people can transcend the limitations of their physical aspects in order to achieve individual freedom and greater truths.

Thus, organized religion and civil government are some of the major barriers to individual and moral freedom. The role of the government should be to facilitate individual freedom and moral rights in a country (Stevenson 53). The people have the right to judge the government based on their individual moral standards. If the government does not respect these rights, the people have the right to rise above its limitations. The people have the right to resist to civil government by involving civil disobedience such as failure to work and pay taxes (Zlogarm 71).

It is necessary to determine how the character of Bartleby the scrivener fits into the transcendentalism and civil disobedience philosophies. Although it is clear that he is suffering from a psychological problem, Bartleby is actually not willing to take his responsibilities at the narrator’s office. In fact, he uses his simple reply “prefer not to” as a means of stating his stance whenever asked to perform a certain task such as proofreading his work.

While his colleagues at the office want Bartleby fired for his irresponsibility, the narrator attempts to understand his position. From the narrator’s perspective, the reader can see some aspects of disobedience and transcendentalist ideas in Bartleby’s actions. For example, it is likely that Bartleby was feeling that his individual freedom was threatened by the heavy work at the office. He felt that the demands of the modern world and the modern way of life are too much because someone has to perform huge tasks just to earn a living (Sten 34).

He seems to believe that it is the right of every person to achieve individual and moral freedom. He tends to believe that it is not necessary to take orders in order to survive. Secondly, by refusing to work, Bartleby tends to believe that both the employer and the government at Wall Street are going beyond their limitations. For example, employees need enough freedom at their work to achieve moral freedom. Instead, the government and employers are exceeding their mandate. As such, to gain his freedom, Bartleby is simply being disobedience- he does not want to take some tasks. He also seems to hate paying taxes, especially because he does not have a home, does not buy foodstuffs and does not use public transport.

However, it is evident that rather than applying philosophical approaches of transcendentalism, it is probable that Bartleby was suffering from psychological depression. Towards the end of the story, the narrator reveals that Bartleby had been sacked from his previous job, where he worked in the “dead letter office” just because the new practices of doing business at the Wall Street no longer needed workers in the section. Therefore, it is probable that Bartleby had suffered psychologically after the loss of his previous job, which led him to adopt the “I prefer not to” behavior.

Still, on transcendentalism philosophy, it is important to consider the issues Bartleby could have been resisting. For example, the narrator reveals that Bartleby is not lazy, especially in the first few days of his employment at the law office. In fact, his work impresses everyone at the office, especially the narrator. Within a few hours, Bartleby produced many papers and was even willing to proofread them. In addition, he went to the extent of working at night using a candle, which made him a better worker than both Nippers and Turkey, who were active only at certain parts of the day. However, it is evident that Bartleby does not want to proofread papers, even those he writes (Sten 33).

He is resisting this task probably because he feels that it is invading his individual freedom. Secondly, it is possible that Bartleby is resisting excessive work, yet the payment at Wall Street is limited. It is worth noting that the narrative was written at a time when Wall Street was quickly becoming the center of America’s business sector, especially in terms of monetary control. In addition, Bartleby could have been resisting taking extra work because the government itself, rather than the employer, was becoming rogue (Sten 35). For instance, the government expected too much taxes from the workers, which meant that they had to work extra hard to earn a living. Therefore, he felt that his individual freedom was threatened.

Moreover, the demands of a modernized society were a problem for the workers at Wall Street. While employers were gaining hefty profits from their businesses, employees were supposed to take extra work to earn better lives, which was always difficult. Michelson’s description of the narrative points out that “Bartleby the Scrivener” was actually a dilemma of the perceptive mind amid the “demands of modern life”. This shows that the demands of the “modern life” were oppressive and often made employees work extra hard to fit in the modernized society that depended on money, the only way to obtain basic needs (Sten 32).

Bartleby may have also been in need of being self-reliant. It is likely that he did not want to take orders from the employer or his colleagues at the office. Else, it would have undermined his state of self-reliance. However, by sleeping in the office and feeding on the Nutcakes brought to him by the errand boy, Bartleby reveals that he was not self-reliant, even though he wanted some kind of freedom.

Ethical issues are also revealed in Melville’s narrative. For instance, it is unethical for Bartleby to resist work, yet he was hired to perform the specific tasks he tends to reject. Secondly, it is unethical for a person of his caliber to sleep at the office and depend on an errand boy as the chief supplier of his food, yet he earns higher wages than what the boy gets. One also wonders why Bartleby would be so unethical to the extent of refusing to take food while in jail, preferring to starve himself to death. On the other hand, the ethical aspects of the work and practices at Wall Street are questionable (Wells 36).

For example, it is unethical for Bartleby’s previous employer to sack his employees just because the business has changed its practices. This must have caused Bartleby some psychological problems after losing the job in which he had developed perfection and interest. Finally, it is unethical for the employers at Wall Street to hire employees and ensure that they work extra hard to obtain their basic needs, yet the profitability was extremely high (Schechter 56).

The analysis reveals that Bartleby’s resistance is based on transcendental ideologies of individual freedom and self-reliance. The inability of the government and the business community to grant and protect individual freedom for their employees is not only unethical but also something prone to civil disobedience, as portrayed by Bartleby’s character in the narrative.

Schechter, Harold. Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend . New York: Random House, 2010. Print.

Sten, Christopher. “Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville’s Dead Letter to Emerson.” Modern Language Quarterly 35.2 (1994): 30–44. Print.

Stevenson, Martin K. Empirical Analysis of the American Transcendental movement . New York, NY: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Wells, Daniel. “”Bartleby the Scrivener,” Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle”. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance , 21.3 (1995): 35–39. Print.

Zlogar, Richard. “’Body Politics in “Bartleby”: Leprosy, Healing, and Christ-ness in Melville’s “Story of Wall-Street”. Nineteenth Century Literature , 53.4 (1999): 505-529. Web.

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Bibliography

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Bartleby, the Scrivener

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Point of View

Point of view is the perspective from which a story is narrated. Melville chose to narrate “Bartleby” in the first-person limited perspective, with a narrator who is a character within the story: Bartleby’s employer. Readers are limited to the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and the events he chooses to convey.

Readers know nothing about the workers in the office except what the narrator knows and chooses to tell us. He focuses on the eccentricities that affect how well or poorly they perform their jobs. Turkey , Nippers , and Bartleby are often admonished for their oddities and praised for the qualities that make them useful to the narrator. The employees are presented mainly from the perspective of their usefulness to the business goals of the lawyer.

Contrast for Emphasis

Melville relies greatly on contrasting opposing concepts to convey meaning in “Bartleby.” The “dead brick wall” is contrasted with the nature that was once there. Wall Street’s bustling and energetic nature by day is contrasted with its ruined, ghost-town nature by night.

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Bartleby, the Scrivener

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Melville’s writing style in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is highly descriptive and philosophical. Take, for example, the following passage that comes after the Lawyer realizes Bartleby has been living at his office:

For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. Cite this Quote

The imagery in this passage is highly evocative—the Lawyer feels a “stinging melancholy” and contrasts the image of “bright silks and sparkling faces […] in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway” with “the pallid copyist” standing before him. Rather than using simple language to say that he felt sad when comparing the lonely Bartleby to the happy people he saw walking around downtown Manhattan earlier in the day, the Lawyer waxes poetic, even using a metaphor in the process (Broadway—a street—becomes a body of water upon which people sail). These stylistic choices help Melville’s readers to understand visually and viscerally the intensity of Bartleby’s isolation as well as the power of the Lawyer’s empathy for his employee.

The final line in the passage also shows the philosophical style in which Melville writes in this story. Suddenly the Lawyer is not only thinking about Bartleby but reflecting on life itself, specifically how “happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof.” In other words, the Lawyer is noting that it’s easy to see evidence of joy because people tend to express it openly, while it’s harder to find evidence of unhappiness because people tend to hide it.