This essay examines Herman Melville's 1853 short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" through the lens of isolation, identity, and the dehumanizing effects of industrial labor. The paper argues that Bartleby functions as an existential hero whose passive refusal to work — repeatedly expressed as "I prefer not to" — represents a desperate attempt to reclaim lost personhood in a capitalist society that reduces workers to their functions. Through close readings of key passages, the essay analyzes Melville's use of irony, food metaphor, and the unreliable narrator to show how the demands of copy work strip the scriveners of their humanity, leaving Bartleby utterly alone and, ultimately, without the will to live.
Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is a strange, almost plotless work of short fiction that details how one law-copier's refusal to work causes chaos in the office where he is employed. While it might be assumed that dismissing a non-productive employee like Bartleby would be relatively simple, Melville makes it clear that Bartleby's refusal to labor carries philosophical as well as economic implications. The other scriveners are shocked by Bartleby's refusal to perform, because it contradicts the principles by which they have defined their lives — namely, the value of hard, laborious, but ultimately meaningless copy work.
Bartleby is a kind of existential hero. Despite working in a crowded office, his sense of the pointlessness of his work and the meaningless nature of his life is acute, in sharp contrast to the other scriveners, who still harbor the delusion that they are performing meaningful labor.
The unique nature of Bartleby is underlined by the story's narrative choice: it is told by a lawyer who feels no conflict over his own duties or those he imposes upon the scriveners. He is perfectly content with his unobstructed view of a brick wall and the singular company with whom he shares his work. Through the use of irony, Melville makes it very clear that the other scriveners have toiled so long at their employment that they have, in effect, lost their humanity.
"First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters." In effect, the other scriveners have become objects rather than human beings — they have become their work, which is something Bartleby presumably wishes to avoid but cannot.
That is why Bartleby is alone amongst his fellow scriveners: he understands all too well the limits of their duties, while those same duties have overwhelmed the characters of the other scriveners to such a degree that they cannot see past their occupations and the purposelessness of their lives. All of these men, in various ways, have become so obsessed with their work that they have effectively become their work. This is another source of Bartleby's intense loneliness — he has no truly "real" men to keep him company, only men who are obsessed with copying. The narrator, as he makes clear, is similarly obsessed with ensuring that his workers view their duties as a kind of sacred bond.
At first, Bartleby attempts to make a good show of laboring hard at his work. "Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically." The narrator makes it clear that the work is not only tedious, dull, and repetitive — it is so overwhelming that it literally saps the life and humanity from Bartleby, making him pale and wan and turning him into a machine.
The narrator's language suggests that he regards the work as a substitute for food, noting that Bartleby "gorges" himself on documents. This metaphor is apt, given that one common defense of tedious work is that one must "work to eat." The fact that the narrator later marvels that Bartleby does not seem to eat and never goes home further underscores the extent to which being a scrivener deprives one of any connection to individuated human experience — even the comforts of food and family, the very reasons for which so many people are supposed to work in the first place. Eventually, obsession with work takes over the need to fulfill the human functions that are supposed to be the real reasons people seek paid employment.
"Labor physically and mentally deforms the workers"
"Bartleby's refusals as bids for personhood"
"Bartleby's death as symbol of capitalist alienation"
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