The cruelty of humanity

Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener is a difficult story to construe; nevertheless I read it a number of times to reinforce my understanding of it and what I found was very interesting. Melville’s structure of how he told the story is laid out differently to the norm. This confused a lot of people but I believe his unique structure was relevant to how he wanted the story told. The title character is not introduced until the fifth page but Melville explains that we need to know the other characters and the narrator before we find out about Bartleby. This I feel is necessary as it shows us the progression of the narrator and how he transforms after meeting Bartleby. I will explain this transformation in my analysis as well as the importance of the characters. Of course there are many interpretations of this famous short story but I felt the most prevalent is a reflection on the cruelty of humanity. Melville’s own experience as a child was that of poverty and this may have contributed to the selected theme of this story. At the age of 15, his father went bankrupt and Melville was forced to go to sea as a cabin boy.

     He began writing novels but when Pierre (1852), was dismissed by critics as incomprehensible trash, he turned to the short story. However this work and another novel failed to restore his reputation. He moved to a house in New York and it was only 30 years after his death that he received credit for his work. In examining Bartleby, the Scrivener, I feel it is important to know the background of the author in order to get a grip on what he is trying to tell us. I think his story reflects his life experience where the cruelty of humanity and society allowed no rewards for his years of hard work.

     In the beginning of the story we are introduced to an elderly man who is the narrator and is experienced in his line of work: “[t]he last thirty years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men” (Melville 878). From his experience of people in the workplace and society, he has become a cold-hearted lawyer. He doesn’t seem to have a personal relationship with his employees calling them by their nicknames which were “deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters” (879). The lawyer seems to only care about the work his employees do: “[w]ith all his failings and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment” (881).

Wall Street

     It’s as if the lawyer has become so cold that he doesn’t rely on his own conscience anymore so he uses Turkey and Nippers to act as his conscience for him: “‘Sit down, Turkey,’ said I, ‘and hear what Nippers has to say’” (887). Their contrasting moods suited the lawyer down to the ground. Nippers was cranky in the morning but relatively mild from 12 noon onwards while the opposite was said for Turkey: “I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other, like guards. When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa. I am not sure what the purpose of Ginger Nut is but I think he may represent innocence. He is not yet aware of evils that lurk in society and goes about his little duties happily: “contained within a nutshell” (882).

     A transformation begins to occur in the lawyer after his first encounters with Bartleby: “There was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him” (884). He feels pity for Bartleby seeing that some great misfortune has come over him. Even though he knows nothing of Bartleby, he sees that the cruelty of humanity has suppressed Bartleby to his current state of intolerability: “[i]t was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach” (891). The lawyer starts to reach out to Bartleby in an attempt to gain back his conscience: “To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience” (886).

     It was from the moment that Bartleby stood out from the crowd I think, that he got a hold of the lawyer and began transforming him: “Imagine my surprise… when… Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, ‘I would prefer not to.’” (883). It is as if from this moment of refusal, Bartleby is showing the lawyer he is not just another scrivener and not another faceless part of his collection. He wants the world to recognize who he is much like how Melville wanted his work to be recognized.

     After Bartleby is sent to the insane asylum, the narrator saw what society had done to him. He heard a report “that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration” (904). The narrator feels great pity for Bartleby at this stage seeing him as “prone to a pallid hopelessness” with such a misfortunate job: “[c]an any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?” (904). The dead letters seem to be symbolic of how Bartleby was shoved away and ignored when he needed to be delivered and helped. When he receives compassion from the lawyer, it seems he is already too far gone and it is too late for anyone to help him. It is as if Bartleby could never recover from the cruelty humanity inflicted upon him.

     In conclusion I feel Melville’s odd structure was a tactic used to draw readers in posing the question: Who is Bartleby? I think this story won its credit for the structure it holds. We see the cruelty of humanity expressed through the progression of the lawyer at the start as a cold-hearted man to a warm and caring person at the end as he saw the cruelty in humanity and tried his best to help Bartleby who had been affected by it. The lawyer has transformed from a man who saw his employees as just useful objects apart of his collection; to someone who cares and wants to change the world into a better place: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” (904).

                                                                Works Cited

Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 878-904. Print