In Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ is alienation, a character sketch of Bartleby is provided by the narrator of the story, a Wall Street lawyer, who hires him as a scrivener, a law copyist. Bartleby is described by the lawyer “one of the strangest [scriveners] [he] ever saw, or heard of” (Melville). Like the readers, the lawyer himself knows little of Bartleby’s life before he hired him. “Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from original sources and in his case, those are very few” (Melville). At first, Bartleby appears to be too normal, and the lawyer grows fond of his calm, composed nature. Although Bartleby does an excellent job but he always seems to work “silently, palely, mechanically” (Melville).
The readers do not find out about Bartleby’s past yet, since he “prefers not to” tell the lawyer about it. Nonetheless, the mysterious absurdness of Bartleby’s character is further revealed when he is fired after refusing to work altogether. However, despite being fired Bartleby remains in the office even after the lawyer moves to another office. For reasons unknown, Bartleby refuses to leave the office, he apparently “prefer[s] not to make any change at all.” In the epilogue, after Bartleby’s death, it revealed that Bartleby was indeed mentally and spiritually afflicted as a result of working for a distinct postal service, handling letters meant for recipients, who were deceased. It becomes apparent, that after handling letters for the dead for so long, Bartleby lost his own will to live.
There are many ways in which Bartleby is estranged from society, which is a major theme of the story. It can be argued that the role of Bartleby in the story alludes to the role of literary writers in today’s society, who are not able to find a place for their art (Marx). Bartleby’s estrangement depicts how literary writers, perhaps even like Melville himself, are estranged by the society. There are various references to “walls” in the story whenever Bartleby is mentioned, which implies the isolation that Bartleby felt in the society. Bartleby feels he is living in a setting where he is under dehumanizing pressures, perhaps that is why he “prefer[s] not to” to do most of the things the lawyer tells him to do.
Bartleby is not only emotionally isolated, but is even physically isolated in the office, which is probably why he ultimately stops doing his job. However, for Bartleby, the walled off office is his world and that is why he wishes to stay there, even though he feels estranged there. Bartleby is actually an ingenious example of how bored, perplexed and disappointed people are with their lives, yet, like Bartleby they too have nowhere else to go, have no choice but to suffer in this world. The original, creative writing of Henry Melville was not appreciated and valued in the society he was living in, and perhaps that is why he chose to reflect his condition in the form of Bartleby, in his story ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’
Works Cited
Marx, Leo. "Melville." http://web.ku.edu. The University of Kansas, Oct 1953. Web. 19 Jan 2013.
Melville, Henry. "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Lawal, Sarah, Maynard Mack, et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. E: 1800 to 1900, 2nd Edition. 2nd ed. E. New York: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2002. Print.
