Character Analysis of Bartleby in Melville's Short Story

Introduction

Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is now considered one of the most important short stories in American literature. Although it did not receive the best reviews when it was first published in the 1850s, the complexity of its writing and the richness of its themes have since established it as one of the most interesting and revealing literary works of its era. The main character, Bartleby, is the central focus of the story and the element that lends the piece much of its complexity.

Introducing Bartleby Through Comparative Characterization

One of the most interesting aspects of the short story is the character of Bartleby, whom the narrator introduces from the very beginning as the subject of his account. The narrator explains: "I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will appear in the sequel" (Melville). The narrator thus places Bartleby at the center of the story, and the entire narration follows in the form of a characterization of him. By tracing Bartleby's actions from his first day of work through to his eventual death, Melville achieves a complex and layered portrait of the role Bartleby plays.

The chief character is anticipated from the very opening, even if he is not fully introduced at first. The narrator's decision to provide background on his own business and his three other employees effectively sets the stage for Bartleby's entrance. The narrator builds up details about the other characters — including assumptions about their working habits — in order to subsequently reveal Bartleby's own qualities and shortcomings by comparison.

The Narrator's Other Employees as Foils

The narrator describes the first employee, Turkey, as follows: "Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock, meridian — his dinner hour — it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing — but, as it were, with a gradual wane — till 6 o'clock, P.M., or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory" (Melville). The narrator goes on to note Turkey's personal failings and unsatisfying work habits.

The second employee is described thus: "Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked" (Melville). Both Turkey and Nippers, then, fail to earn positive assessments from their employer, yet manage to remain employed. The gap between the work they were hired to perform and their actual output makes Bartleby's own productivity — up to a point — all the more striking by contrast. In this way, one of the earliest characterizations of the main character is achieved through the comparative portrayal of these two supporting figures.

As per the narrator's first direct description of Bartleby: "a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now — pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby" (Melville). The narrator adds that he 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" — a remark that underscores precisely why the initial characterization of the other employees was necessary.

Conclusion

Overall, the short story's central character is representative both of Melville's craft and of the symbolic dimensions his fiction can achieve. Bartleby's enigmatic personality, his passive defiance, and his ultimate fate combine to make him far more than a curious legal copyist — he stands as a figure of profound human significance whose resonance has only grown since the story's first publication.

Reference

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street." 2013. Available online at