Bartleby, the Scrivener

Melville begins “Bartleby” with long, imagery-heavy descriptions of the characters in the office and the office itself. While we know from the beginning that the lawyer will recount a tale about Bartleby, readers are not introduced to Bartleby until after six pages of exposition. Melville begins his story this way for several reasons, all of which are tied to the story’s broader themes, motifs, and meanings.

First, readers learn that the lawyer is of some importance and has been praised by historical figure John Jacob Astor for his work. This importance might imply that the lawyer has offices that convey his status to guests and employees alike. This expectation is quickly knocked down with comical effect when readers learn that the offices are dismal. On one end, the second-story office looks onto a sky-light shaft of the office building, which the narrator says is “deficient in what landscape painters call ‘life’” (4). At the other end, it looks onto a “lofty brick wall, black by age” (4). The language connotes sterility, death, and malaise.

Second, Melville introduces readers to every named character of relevance in the story. These characters are all quickly revealed to be flat: characters with static, unchanging, often unrealistic traits. Nippers’s agitation every morning and Turkey’s after-lunch rages are not examples of realistic behavior. Later in “Bartleby,” Melville alludes to the philosophy of determinism, which says that free will does not exist. By beginning the story with descriptions of flat characters who never change or act differently, Melville introduces themes of free will and determinism.

Melville experienced financial precarity throughout his life, especially after the death of his father, which led him to work as a clerk in a New York bank. According to biographers, Melville felt bitter and pessimistic during this period of his life, feelings reflected in the atmosphere of Bartleby’s office. Late into “Bartleby,” the narrator relays a real historical incident about the murder of printer Samuel Adams by John C. Colt. The lawyer blames this “deplorable act” on the office environment, which he says is “unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations” (26). Melville heightens the dreariness of the office by using the figurative language of religion (“unhallowed”) to suggest the office is not divine, welcoming, or safe.

Reflecting the dismal atmosphere is Bartleby’s poverty and homelessness, which are hinted at throughout the story. The lawyer describes Bartleby’s pale and sickly appearance as “cadaverous.” Critics and scholars often read Bartleby’s poverty, diet, and overwork as an example of clinical depression or the consequences of economic inequality in the United States. These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. The story’s severe pessimism and absurdity, and the peculiar psychologies of the characters, are reasons why “Bartleby” is considered ahead of its time in the history of literature.

Melville indicates the narrator’s wealth by the expensive coats he wears, his ability to give Turkey a coat, and his decision to move his business to a different office on a whim. The narrator and Bartleby are at opposite ends of the social spectrum. Despite Bartleby’s condition worsening throughout the story—first he is employed and saving money, then he injures his eyes from work, then he is evicted to the stairwell, then thrown in prison and starves to death—the narrator conveys that his charity toward Bartleby makes him feel good. Critics diverge on whether this is meant to show the futility of charity in an unequal society or, as the narrator says, that charity is simply wasted on some people.

“Bartleby” is also often read as an absurdist work written before absurdism was a recognizable literary movement. Something is absurd when actions, consequences, or behaviors do not follow a logical sequence or have reasonable causes. Philosopher and writer Albert Camus often remarked that Melville’s work contains the absurd. The flat characters of Turkey and Nippers, and their clockwork fits of agitation, along with Bartleby’s patently strange behavior, are examples of absurdity.