By Herman Melville (1819-1891) A Study Guide | |
Study Guide Compiled by Michael J. Cummings.© 2009 ......."Bartleby the Scrivener" is a short story centering on the staff of a Wall Street office that prepares copies of legal documents. The story first appeared in 1853 in the November and December issues of Putnam's Magazine, a monthly journal devoted to literature, art, science, and national news. .......The action takes place in the financial district of New York City in the middle of the nineteenth century. At one point in the story, the narrator reports that he traveled to upper Manhattan, suburban communities, and towns in New Jersey while on a short vacation from work. However, no scenes in the story are set in those locales. Note: Melville does not provide full names or family backgrounds for the characters in "Bartleby the Scrivener." Perhaps he intended them as representations of nineteenth-century American employers and employees in general.The Narrator: Well-to-do attorney. He operates a Wall Street business that prepares copies of legal documents such as deeds, mortgages, and transcripts of courtroom proceedings. He prides himself on the profitability and efficiency of his business but is unable to deal with the recalcitrance of a new employee, Bartleby, who refuses to perform certain tasks. Bartleby: New scrivener (one who copies documents). He works quietly and efficiently but one day surprises his employer, the narrator, when he refuses to carry out an assigned task, saying "I prefer not to." Thereafter, he continues to "prefer not to" do the narrator's bidding. Nippers: Scrivener who suffers bouts of indigestion and irritability in reaction to the tedium of copying documents. He hopes to better himself and occasionally does outside work for certain clients. Ginger Nut: Twelve-year-old office boy who makes a dollar a week. His fathers hopes that he will learn the law. Carman: Father of Ginger Nut. He is the driver of a horse-drawn cart who wants his son to make something of himself. The carman plays no active role in the story. Nippers' Clients: Men for whom Nippers does outside work unrelated to his job in the narrator's office. The narrator describes his clients as "ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats." He suspects that one "client" who visited Nippers was really a bill collector. Mr. B—: Attorney who contacts the narrator after the latter moves to a new office. He complains to the narrator that Bartleby refuses to leave the narrator's old office. Landlord: Owner of the building that houses the narrator's office. After Bartleby refuses to leave the building, the landlord calls the police, who arrest and jail Bartleby. Landlord's Tenants: Office renters who are disturbed by Bartleby's presence. Mr. Cutlets: Cook at the jail. Officer and Two Turnkeys: Prison officials who help the narrator find Bartleby after the latter's arrest. . ![]() By Michael J. Cummings.© 2009 .
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Interpretation .......The
narrator provides only scant information about himself and the other characters
in the short story. For example, he withholds the full names and family
backgrounds of everyone except deceased persons. In addition, he never
learns why Bartleby refuses to perform certain assigned tasks and why he
eventually refuses to do anything at all. Consequently, interpretations
of the story vary among readers.
Narrator's Point of View and His Shortcomings .......An
unidentified narrator tells the story in first-person point of view. He
is a lawyer but does not practice in courts. Instead, he operates a profitable
business in which he and his staff prepare copies of legal documents. He
tells his story from a biased perspective, blaming his workers for problems
for which he is indirectly at fault. Consider, for example, that he hired
Bartleby without thoroughly checking his background. At the time of the
hiring, the narrator does not even know what Bartleby's previous job was.
It is not until Bartleby dies that the narrator hears, via rumor, that
Bartleby had worked in the Dead Letter office in Washington.
![]() Failure of Management to Deal With the Quiet Desperation of Employees .......“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," Henry David Thoreau observed in Walden, published in 1854. The previous year, Herman Melville reached a similar conclusion in “Bartleby the Scrivener"—namely, that many men live quietly from day to day in a desperate struggle against the tedium of a routine. Some men become drinkers, like Turkey. Some become irritable dyspeptics, like Nippers. And some, like Bartleby, quit the daily routine and become zombies dead to the world around them. In fact, the narrator repeatedly refers to Bartleby as pale, ghostly, deathly, etc., as in the following passages: Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage........Although the narrator attempts to fathom Bartleby's problems, invites him to his own home to allow Bartleby to discuss his problems in comfortable surroundings, and offers him severance pay, the narrator does so primarily to resolve a nettlesome office problem. The narrator is more concerned with restoring sanity to his office routine than he is with restoring sanity to the mind of Bartleby. .......As for Nippers and Turkey, the narrator regards their symptoms of discontent as mere eccentricities instead of serious problems. Consequently, he fails to take remedial action, such as paying better wages and enlarging his staff with several more scriveners. The Emptiness of a Programmed Existence .......Everyday
life has become ritualized and repetitive for Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby.
Each is a captive of a humdrum routine; each leads a programmed existence.
Only Bartleby appears to understand what is happening, and only he makes
an effort to escape the office routine.
Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity:—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.Perhaps in his job as a scrivener for the narrator, Bartleby was also privy to sensitive information about people involved in legal action over deeds, mortgages, bequests, and so on. Exploitation of Workers .......In the mid-nineteenth century, employers often got rich on the backs of their workers, making handsome profits for themselves but paying their employees meager wages for working long hours. In “Bartleby the Scrivener," the narrator makes excellent profits but is tight-fisted when it comes to remunerating his staff, as he unwittingly discloses in the following passage about Turkey. Note the words highlighted in red. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not be to handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man with so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time........Nippers, who is less than half Turkey's age, probably receives even less money than Turkey. And as a newcomer, Bartleby probably makes less than either man. Yet the narrator expects each scrivener to do excruciatingly tedious work. Here is the narrator's own evaluation of the task of checking copies for accuracy: It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.Bartleby's Rebellion as a Reflection of the Labor Movement's Discontent .......Bartleby's refusal to follow orders reflects the discontent of exploited workers who were pressing for reform in the middle of the nineteenth century. Their activism led to the foundation of the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor in the 1860s and the powerful American Federation of Labor in 1886. Of course, Bartleby does not explain why "I prefer not to" work, but it may well be that he—like other workers—is growing tired of a repetitive daily routine that pays low wages. He does not wish to become a machine that churns out legal documents one after the other. Unfortunately, Bartleby carries his protest campaign to the extreme, refusing even to eat when he is in jail. .......Who
is the protagonist, Bartleby or the narrator?
All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion.The narrator again reveals his sensitivity to others' opinions when lawyers and witnesses visit his office and see Bartleby unoccupied but refusing to run errands for them. The narrator then says, 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 at my office. This worried me very much. And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation . . . I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus.Later, when the landlord and his supporters complain to the narrator about Bartleby's presence, the narrator worries that the situation will result in a hubbub that will reach the newspapers. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me—no more than to any one else. In vain:—I was the last person known to have any thing to do with him, and they held me to the terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the papers (as one person present obscurely threatened) I considered the matter, and at length said, that if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in his (the lawyer's) own room, I would that afternoon strive my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained of........Thus, because the story centers mostly on how the narrator reacts to Bartleby as a way to develop the themes, it seems that the narrator is the more logical choice as the protagonist. Bartleby then becomes the antagonist, the catalyst who makes the narrator react. .......The twelve-year-old Ginger Nut represents the future. He is to become a lawyer, like the narrator. Ginger Nut spends little time at his desk, the narrator says, but he is called in to help check documents for accuracy. In addition, he sweeps up and runs errands, including buying snacks for Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby. Ginger Nut does not exhibit any symptoms of discontent. Perhaps he realizes that he will someday work in a challenging profession that pays him well. Ginger Nut brings out a positive characteristic of the narrator--namely, the narrator's willingness to help a boy just starting out in life. He also brings out a positive characteristic of Bartleby, benevolence. Whenever Ginger Nut returns with Bartleby's snacks--small cakes--Bartleby rewards the boy with two of the cakes. .......The climax occurs when the narrator fails on his last attempt to persuade Bartleby to leave the office building. Imagery: Walls and Other Barriers .......To underscore the idea that the central characters are prisoners of their daily routine, Melville presents images of walls and other barriers that surround or separate the characters. Consider the narrator's description of his office near the beginning of the story: At one end they [the office chambers] looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call "life." But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.After hiring Bartleby, the narrator mentions other barriers in the office area to which he assigns Bartleby: I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself. According to my humor I threw open these doors, or closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small side-window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back-yards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above, between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice.The narrator later tells the reader that “for long periods he [Bartleby] would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall. . . ." So frequent are Bartleby's staring spells that the narrator comes to call them “dead-wall reveries." After Bartleby goes to prison, the narrator visits him and describes the scene: Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the inclosed grass-platted yards thereof. And so I found him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves.At the end of the story, Bartleby dies while lying next to the prison wall. . ![]() Following are examples of figures of speech in the story. Alliteration After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery one of Nippers.Onomatopoeia Of a cold morning when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth.Metaphor Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but his own peculiar business there. (Comparison of Bartleby's workplace to the dwelling of a hermit.)Simile Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he [Bartleby] appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. (Comparison of Bartleby to a ghost.)Anaphora .......Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a clause or another group of words. Anaphora imparts emphasis and balance, as in the following example: As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition.Personification Nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. (Comparison of "something superstitious" to a person.)Irony .......The narrator becomes frustrated with Bartleby's repeated response, "I prefer not." Ironically, although he does not realize it, the narrator responds in a similar way to Bartleby, Nippers, Turkey, and society in general. For example, he prefers not to practice courtroom law in order to make an easy but profitable living in an office. He prefers not to make changes that would ease the burden on his staff. He prefers not to pay Turkey (and presumably Nippers and Bartleby) a good salary. Adam: First man in
the Bible's Book of Genesis. The narrator refers to himself and Bartleby
as "sons of Adam" to point out that they are, in a sense, brothers.
.......Although "Bartleby the Scrivener" ends tragically, the story is not without humor. Consider the Dickensian characters: a red-faced man half-drunk at his desk attempting to copy a document word for word, a finicky dyspeptic adjusting and readjusting his desk, and a zombie-like man staring out the window all day at a wall. After Bartleby repeatedly says "I prefer not to," the other characters begin using the word prefer as well, making the narrator wonder what the deuce is going on. And then there is the narrator's continuing struggle with Bartleby. No matter what the narrator does, he cannot get Bartleby to do his bidding. The narrator's schemes are reminiscent of those of the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote in his losing battle with the Roadrunner. .......Herman Melville, was born in New York City on Aug. 1, 1819, and died there on Sept. 28, 1891. His name was Herman Melvill until 1832, when the family added the final "e" to the name. He was one of eight children, four boys and four girls. Melville taught school briefly in Pittsfield, Mass., studied surveying, served as a cabin boy on a voyage to Liverpool, England, and in 1841 joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet for a voyage to the South Seas. He jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands and spent time there with the native people according to unconfirmed accounts. He also reportedly served on an Australian whaler, the Lucy Ann. Later, in Nantucket, Mass., he was hired as a harpooner on the Charles & Henry, then quit the ship in the Hawaiian Islands and signed on as a seaman with a frigate, the United States, and ended his sea career in 1844. His sea background, along with his extensive reading of the great works of literature, provided him the raw material for his great novel Moby Dick. His life in New York City provided him the background for "Bartleby the Scrivener." 1....Point
out several passages in the story indicating that the narrator did not
thoroughly check Bartleby's background before hiring him.
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