Literary Analysis of Bartleby the Scrivener Essay

Bartleby the scratch awl could be described as a fabrication more or less getting free of its title character, about the bank clerks attempt to get relieve of Bartleby, and Bartlebys tenacious capacity to be for incessantly and a day there. It is the story of an unnamed lawyer and his employee, Bartleby, a scribbler of law documents.Confronted non only with Bartlebys refusal to do mildew (first to read copies against the original, whence to copy altogether), merely in addition with the contagious nature of the particular speech communication of his refusal (Bartlebys grotesque I would privilege non to), the vote counter concludes that, ahead Bartleby turns the tongues any further of those with whom he comes into contact, he must get rid of Bartleby. At the similar time Bartleby feels mobbed in his privacy (27) when the new(prenominal) contribution grazeers crowd him behindhand his screen, they in turn argon invaded by his affectedness his private idiom prefe r. Bartlebys presence breaks down the clear distinctions among public and private, professional and domestic, surrounded by privacy and the mob. By pinpointing Bartleby as the typesetters case of infectious language (language turned bad), the fibber wants to stop the course of a process (the turning of tongues) already in progress. But getting rid of Bartleby is as tricky as getting rid of a degenerative condition the fabricator emphasizes a phrase which appears textually in italics he was always there (20). Bartleby is, as the storyteller calls him, a nuisance (40), an intoler satisfactory incubus. As a character in the story with a body, he moves in rectitude little, but the few terms he speaks break out at unexpected moments in the office. Every attempt the fabricator makes to control the inactive Bartleby and his infectious language fails humorously (Schehr 97). The fibber experiences a curious tensity between the impossible imperative (on the level of the story) t o get rid of the subject, and the impossibleness (on the level of the narration) to write his complete biography (Bartlebys history). Thus, Bartleby is also a fable about compose history or biography.In attempting to write what he thinks of as Bartlebys biography, the fibber merely misnames his writing project, or he emphasizes it from the wrong point of view. In search of Bartlebys origins, the narrator does not simply narrate (as he thinks) the history of Bartleby the Scrivener he relates rather the story of his own fretfulness vis-a-vis Bartleby. In particular, he relates his anxiety over the scribblers silence and modes of suspension that silence for we could say that, rather than speaking very little or in particular ways, Bartleby has particular ways of occasionally breaking silence.It is this military group in speech, this unexpected eruption, which the narrator fears. The narrator, whose acquaintances describe him as an eminently arctic man, who likes nothing better t han the cool tranquility of a snug rehash (4), is thrown decidedly off kilter when faced with what he legal injury Bartlebys passive resistance (17). Bartlebys weapon is his total apathy to truth, whereas the narrator seeks a second opinion on truth from the other office compeer. Bartleby could be seen as the whiz solid block near which the narrator writes his own story about truth rather than the truth about the Bartleby story.Bartlebys passive resistance actually generates the story confronted with it, the narrator creates theories (his doctrine of assumptions, for instance), carries on debates with himself, and seeks the counsel of others all with the opaque Bartleby as the core. In reconstructing Bartlebys story, the narrator follows an implicit logic which he neer forthwith states. It is the logic of cause and effect. (He is not deliberately hiding this logic, but because he takes its validity for granted, he never comments on it searingly.) Believing in the hypothe sis of finding a specific, locatable, and nameable cause to Bartlebys condition (as he is able to do with the other office workers, Nippers and Turkey, whose moods vary according to their diets and the time of day), the narrator thinks that by eradicating the cause of the problem, he green goddess alter the effects, the effects of Bartlebys speaking condition in the office space. McCall follows the same logic as the narrator in seeking causes of Bartlebys behavior.He mentions remark that when the narrator asks Bartleby to run an errand for him at the post office, that is probably the last place, if the rumor is correct, that Bartleby would ever want to go. (McCall 129). The narrator never considers that his line of reasoning might be faulty that Bartlebys condition may not be colligate to a specific, locatable, nameable cause. We as readers may be placed in the same position as the narrator in that we never know both the origin of Bartlebys condition we witness primarily its ef fects, or symptoms, in the story.These symptoms reside not only in Bartleby as individual character, but in the very way the narrator tells the story about that character. quite an than speaking about the cause of Bartlebys condition, unity could more ably speak about the ways in which its effects are dispersed to other characters within the text. When the narrator impatiently summons Bartleby to join and military service the others in the scenario of group reading, Bartleby responds, I would prefer not to (14). Hearing this chemical re carry through the narrator turns into a pillar of salt (14).(Faced with Bartlebys responses and sheer presence, the narrator oftentimes evokes images of his losing, accordingly waking to, consciousness. ) When he recovers his senses, he tries to reason with Bartleby, who in the meantime has retreated behind his screen. The narrator says These are your own copies we are about to get a line. It is labor saving to you, because one examination w ill closure for your four papers. It is common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so? Will you not speak? Answer (15)The narrator is exasperated when Bartleby does not respond immediately to the logic behind his work ethic. These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you. Examining or reading copy is a money saving activity, from which every segment of the office profits (four documents for the price of one reading ). Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. To the contract the lawyer emphatically demands from his employee, a bond base on an rally of reading, Bartleby replies three times, gently, in a flutelike tone, I (would) prefer not to (15).By refusing to read copy, Bartleby refuses to consent to the prudence of the office. It is perhaps only to another type of reading, one not based on a system of exchange and profit, which Bartleby consents. Although the narrator says he has never seen Bartleby readin g not even a newspaper (24) he does often notice him staring outside the window of the office onto a brick wall. arrant(a) at the dead brick wall (in what the narrator calls Bartlebys dead-wall reveries) may be Bartlebys only form of reading, taking the place of the economy-based reading demanded of him in the process of verifying copies.About halfway through the story, the lawyer/narrator visits his office on a Sunday morning and, discovering a blanket, max and towel, a few crumbs of ginger nuts and a morsel of cheese, deduces that the scrivener never leaves the office. Realizing the full impact of Bartlebys condition, he states, What I maxim that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. (25) The narrator intelligibly locates the disorder in Bartleby. Seeing himself in the role of diagnostician and healer, he himself is faced with the hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill (24).The narrators concern about an individ ual medical cure should more aptly be a concern about an obsessively private rhetorical debate or a dangerously idiomatic group transmission system (Perry 409). Despite his assumption that Bartleby is incurable, or perhaps precisely because he can effect no cure, the narrator beleaguers himself throughout the story with questions or commands to do something about Bartleby (McCall 9). If the private mans disorder can be passed on to another (one) person, what happens when the condition is let loose out of scrawny quarantine into the public space of the office?Bartleby walks a precarious tightrope between comedy and tragedy (Inge 25). The tragic dimension often resides in the narrators turning inward on himself (a sort of tragic compression), then putting himself on trial, an interior moment of accusation which eventually results in the collapse of the narrative in a single sigh or exclamation (Ah, Bartleby Ah, humanity 46). The comic effects are often associate to the authoritari an attempt (and failure) to contain the spread of idiom as transmittal (Perry 412).If Bartleby has been a figure for tragedy in the lone meditation of the narrator, he becomes a figure for comedy in his contact with his office mates Nippers and Turkey. The more the narrator tries to regulate the contact between the three, the more hilarious and significantly out of control is Bartlebys influence. The effort to contain or control tends actually to promote the epidemic proportions of the narrative. It is the narrator himself who uses a mental lexicon of contagion in relation to Bartleby. He says he has had more than so-so(predicate) contact (3) with other scriveners he has known.Bartleby exceeds this already extraordinary contact he has been touched by handling dead letters (Schehr 99). Some critics breed the narrators language of contagion in talking about Bartleby. McCall, in his study on The Silence of Bartleby, describes our response, the collective readers response, to read ing the floor As we go through the story, we watch with a certain witch how Bartleby is assureing. We root for the spread of the wiretap. (145) In a somewhat less delightful vein, Borges says, Bartlebys frank nihilism contaminates his companions and even the stolid man who tells Bartlebys story. (Borges 8) In the office scopes where the employees and boss come inevitably together, the bug record book is Bartlebys prefer. Nippers uses it mockingly against the narrator as a transitive action verb when he overhears Bartlebys vocalizes of refusal to the narrators plea to be a little reasonable. Bartleby echoes, At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable (26). If Nippers is suffering from his own peculiar and chronic condition of indigestion, he takes on the symptoms of Bartlebys condition when he exclaims to the narrator, Prefer not, eh? Id prefer him, if I were you sir, Id prefer him Id give him preferences, the stubborn mule What is it, sir, pray, that he prefe rs not to do now? (26) Whereas later in the story the narrator totally loses his critical skill to catch himself in his speech, in this exchange he is still able to articulate the effect Bartlebys word is having on him. He notes anxiously, Somehow, of late, I had got into the way of involuntarily using the word prefer upon all sorts of not scarce suitable occasions. (27) It is this qualifier not exactly which is of particular interest.Bartlebys use of words is not exactly wrong. Prefer is so insidious because it is only slightly askew, dislocated, idiosyncratic. As McCall accurately notes about the power of Bartlebys I prefer not to, one must hear, in the little silence that follows it, how the line delivers two irrelevant meanings, obstinacy and politeness. (152) The line calls just enough attention to itself so as to attract others to its profoundly mixed message (its perfect yes and no) in an imitative way (McCall 152). Prefer is as inobtrusive, as contagious, and as subversiv e as a sneeze.The narrator lets it out of his mouth involuntarily. When Turkey enters the scene and uses the bug word without realizing it (without Nippers italicized parody or the narrators critical comments), the narrator says to him, in a slightly excited tone, So you hit got the word, too (27). In this pivotal sentence, the verb get implies to invite (as in to receive a word or message), but more strikingly for our discussion here, it implies the verb to catch one catches the word as one would catch a cold.The narrator attempts to monitor the contagion by naming the bug and pointing it out to the others. But the word mocks everyones will to control it prefer pops up six times in the next half a page four times unconsciously in the speech of one of the employees, and twice consciously (modified by word) in the narration of the lawyer. Bartleby could be described as a story of the intimacy or anxiety a lawyer feels for the law-copyist he employs. The narrator arranges a scre en in the corner of his office behind which Bartleby may work.Pleased with the arrangement of placing Bartleby behind the screen in near proximity to his own desk, the narrator states, Thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined (12). The narrator idealizes the possibility of a perfect harmony between privacy and community in the work environment, but it is precisely the conflict between these two spatial conditions which generates the story, specify not only Bartlebys idiocy, but the narrators as well.The narrator most characteristically encounters Bartleby emerging from his retreat (13) or retiring into his hermitage (26). The screen isolates Bartleby from the view of the narrator, but not from his voice. Works Cited Borges, Jorge Luis. Prologue to Herman Melvilles Bartleby in Herman Melvilles Billy Budd, Benito Cereno, Bartleby the Scrivener, and Other Tales, ed. Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1987 Inge, Thomas M. , ed.Bartleby the Inscrutable. Hamden , CT Archon Books, 1979. McCall, Dan. The Silence of Bartleby. Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1989. Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and Other Stories. New York Penguin Books, 1986. Perry, Dennis R. Ah, Humanity Compulsion Neuroses in Melvilles Bartleby. Studies in Short Fiction 23. 4 (fall 1987) 407-415. Schehr, Lawrence R. Dead earn Theories of Writing in Bartleby the Scrivener Enclitic vii. l (spring 1983) 96-103.