Bartleby, the Scrivner

lawyers and literature

Strangeness Abounds

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Herman Melville, "Bartleby, The Scrivener" in Jay Wishingrad (ed.), Legal Fictions Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law 224-258 (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1992)

<1> The lawyer narrator describes himself as an eminently safe man.

What does it mean to live a safe life?

Is the narrator's attempt to lead such a life illusory?

How does the narrator's view of his professional life affect your reaction to him, and your reading of the story?

Before the arrival of Bartleby, the narrator has managed to shut out the outside world. "According to my humor, I threw open these doors, or closed them." How does this capacity (and willingness to deploy it) affect your understanding of the narrator's character?

What kind of person is the narrator? The narrator describes himself as an elderly man. "I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easy way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds, and mortgages, and title deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man." [224-225]. We are told that the narrator was viewed by one of his patrons, John Jacob Astor, as a man of "prudence" and "method." [225]

And later, the narrator explains that in his new position as Master of Chancery, "I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages. . . ." [225]

During the turmoil with Bartleby, the narrator remarks that "for the first time in my life a feeling of over-powering stinging melancholy seized me." What does this tell us about the narrator?

How does the narrator's life change as a result of his encounter with Bartleby?

<2> How does the narrator's profession--he is a lawyer--affect your reading of the story? How does the fact that the narrator is a lawyer affect his relationship with Bartleby?

<3> How do you explain the narrator's relation to Bartleby?

How do you explain the narrator's new found compassion (and responsibility) for an employee who will not only will not work but will not leave the premises when asked to do so?

Bartleby's co-workers don't share the narrator's puzzlement and compassion for Bartleby (although their reactions vary). How do you account for their indifference to Bartleby?

Of what symbolic significance is Bartleby's physical location in the office?

What is your reaction to the narrator's resolution to terminate Bartleby's employment because of fear that he will be viewed badly by others?

Why doesn't the narrator simply take the necessary means to evict Bartleby?

<4> What part do Bartleby's fellow employees at the law office play in the story?

Would it be possible to imagine each of the office employees as aspects of the narrator's own psyche?

How does the narrator's vivid imagery in his description of his employees give life to these characters?

<5> How is the reader to understand Bartleby's odd behavior?

Of what significance is the phrase which Bartleby adoptes: "I'd prefer not to"?

What is wrong with Bartleby?

How are we to interpret Bartleby's refusal to work when requested to do so by his employer?

In what sense is Bartleby a true "rebel"?

Alan Silver in "The Lawyer and the Scrivener," 48 (3) Partisan Rev. 409 (1981) provides a list of possibilities for thinking about Bartleby:

(1) "Bartleby is Melville himself--the serious writer in commercial society, whose protest is his silence."

(2) "Bartleby is the common man, defeated by the cash nexus."

(3) "Bartleby is alienated man, anticipating Joseph K. [in Kafka's novel]."

(4) "[H]e is oppressed labor, sabotaging by mute passivity the social machinery of Wall Street."

(5) "He is the repressed double of the narrator-lawyer, acting out the despair that underlies a placid commitment to profession and the convention."

(6) "He is a Christ figure, a martyr of modern life."

(7) "He is the stranger in the city."

(8) "He is a schizophrenic or a nihilist."

How does Bartleby teach the narrator something he needs to know?

Of what significance is it that Bartleby refuses to reveal anything about himself?

How is a reader--how do you?--respond to Bartleby?

Does the postscript to the story explain Bartleby's odd behavior?

<6> Melville ends the story: "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!" What is this exclamation supposed to mean?

<7> Some questions about the story:

Is the central theme of the story, the narrator's "test"? [One commentator has suggested that Bartleby is a test by God to see how the lawyer will react. Harold Schechter, Bartleby the Chronometer, 19 (4) Studies in Short Fiction 359 (1982)]

What factor does the "loneliness" of the characters play in the story?

Is the narrator's social class a factor in the story? (In what sense does becoming a lawyer leave you with the sense that you are moving to "a higher social plateau"?

<8> Would you recommend this story to fellow law students? If so, on what basis?

Notes

<1> "Bartleby, the Scrivner" has been the subject of a substantial body of scholarly commentary. See e.g., Daniel Stempel & Bruce M. Stillians, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Parable of Pessimism, 27 (3) Nineteenth-Century Fiction 268 (1972); Johannes Dietrich Bergmann, "Bartleby" and The Lawyer's Story, 47 Amer. Lit. 432 (1975); Steven Doloff, The Prudent Samaritan: Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" as Parody of Christ's Parable to the Lawyer, 34 (3) Stud. Short Fiction 357 (1997); Richard R. John, The Lost World of Bartleby, the Ex-Officeholder: Variations on a Venerable Literary Form, 70 New England Quart. 631 (1997); Andre Furlani, Bartleby the Socratic, 34 (3) Studies in Short Fiction 335-355 (1997); Thomas Dilworth, Narrator of "Bartleby": The Christian-Humanist Acquaintance of John Jacob Astor, 38 (1) Papers on Language & Literature 49 (2002).

For a collection of essays on the story see: M Thomas Inge (ed.), Bartleby the Inscrutable: A Collection of Commentary on Herman Melville's Tale "Bartleby the Scrivener" (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1979).

There is a fine collection of essays and book chapters on "Bartleby" on Professor Haskell Springer's website, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street. For students & scholars, this website will provide far more reading on Bartleby than most of us will ever get around to doing.

In the legal literature, see: Carrie Menke-Meadow, The Sense and Sensibilities of Lawyers: Lawyering in Literature, Narratives, Film and Television, and Ethical Choices Regarding Career and Craft, 31 McGeorge L. Rev. 1, 7-11 (1999); Robin West, Invisible Victims: A Comparison of Susan Glaspell's Jury of Her Peers and Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, 8 Cardozo Stud. in L. & Lit. 203 (1996).

<2> "I'm not saying . . . the story solves anything. Great literature, I think, does not offer solutions or answers, though it may yield considerable illumination of our problems; it is like art which Picasso had in mind when he once said that art is a lie that tells the truth." [Merton M. Sealts, Herman Melville's "Bartleby" 15 (Madison: Wisconsin Humanities Committee, 1982)]. Compare the Sealts comment with the commentary in a letter from the Wisconsin Humanities Committe which sponsored, In 1982, a seminar on Bartleby attended by 100 lawyers from around Wisconsin. Patricia C. Anderson, on behalf of the Committee, offered the following description of the day's discussion: "Among the recurring topics were questions about how lawyers perceive and act on their responsibilities as professionals and as human beings to provide care; the limitations of the legal system--or any system imposed upon human nature; what happens when a lawyer is dealing with a client who cannot or will not make what are called 'rational decisions'; how a lawyer can balance the demands of professional standards with the 'demands of the spirit'...." [Letter to interested persons, from Patricia C. Anderson, Wisconsin Humanities Committee, October, 1982]

<3> Bartleby, has been adapted to film, "Bartleby" (2001)(directed by Jonathan Parker): review

<4> Finally, we might note that still another Melville story, Billy Budd, has established itself as a "law and literature" classic. [Billy Budd--Wikipedia][Billy Budd--an interactive edition][Billy Budd--the film]

<5>"Bartleby, the Scrivener" was published serially in consecutive issues of Putnam's Monthly magazine in November and December 1853. Digital Facsimile of " Bartleby, the Scrivener," Putnam's Monthly text are available online: [Part I] [Part II]

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
(Haskell Springer, Professor of English, University of Kansas has
compiled a wonderful collection of essays on Bartleby)

Bartleby the Scrivener
Wikipedia

A Blueprint for Melville's "Bartleby"

Historicizing Melville’s “Bartleby”

Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno"

Reading "Bartleby"

The Narrator in Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener": Morally Corrupt or Deep Humanitarian?

Being as Refusal: Melville’s Bartleby as Anti-Hero

Melville's New Fallen American Adam

Behind the Wall

Herman Melville

Perspectives in American Literature: Herman Melville

Herman Melville: Academy of American Poets

Herman Melville
Wikipedia

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Herman Melville (1819- 1891)

The Confidence Man: His Masquerade

Arrowhead, the Home of Herman Melville

The American Renaissance

Collecting Herman Melville

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