batleby the scrivener Essay -- essays research papers

"Bartleby the Scrivener" is a complex story, so I am going to zero in on one particularly interesting and intelligent aspect of it. Due to the power of the message even this one particular aspect will be complex, of course. The first thing to note is that the story has a first-person narrator. The narrator, an anonymous lawyer, is in fact a major character in his own right. Ostensibly the story is about Bartleby and his actions as a scrivener. However, what the story is really about, in a sense, is the effect Bartleby seems to have on the narrator. We learn a great deal about the narrator, but more importantly, we see him undergo several rather significant changes. These changes bring to light Melville’s comment on the oppression and lack of compassion in the emerging capitalist economy The narrator's initial self-characterization is important to the story. He is a "safe" man, one who takes few risks and tries above all to conform to societies norms (Melville 1109). The most pragmatic concerns of financial security and ease of life are his priorities. He has made himself perfectly at home in the modern economy: he works as a lawyer dealing with rich men's legal documents. He is therefore a complement or a double to Bartleby in many ways. Doubling is a recurring theme in "Bartleby the Scrivener." Bartleby is a phantom double of our narrator, and the parallels between them will be explored later. Nippers and Turkey are doubles of each other. Nippers is useless in the morning and productive in the afternoon, while Turkey is drunk in the afternoon and productive in the morning. Nippers' ambition mirrors Turkey's resignation to his place and his sad, uneventful career, the difference coming about because of their respective ages. Nippers cherishes ambitions of being more than a mere scrivener, while the elderly Turkey must plead with the narrator to consider his age when evaluating his productivity. Their vices are also parallel, in terms of being appropriate vices for each man's respective age. Alcoholism is a vice that develops with time. Ambition arguably is most volatile in a man's youth. These characters provide valuable comic relief in what is otherwise a somber and upsetting tale. Melville’s p urpose in making Bartleby’s personality act complimentary to the narrator’s is to demonstrate the chang... ...ience with Bartleby. It is doubtful that the lawyer at the beginning of the story, as he pictured himself, could have imagined such personal tragedies. Here we see the denouement. The culmination of the change that Bartleby has affected in the lawyer. â€Å"Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!† (1134) This final sentence shows a depth of emotion that would have been impossible for the narrator at the beginning of the story. This obvious change gives readers the evidence that Melville was trying to display in support of his view of the negative aspects of the business world. This world and the humanity in it had affected both characters. Bartleby of course was the employee whose constant bombardment with the uncompassionate and pitiless world of Capitalism caused him to lose desire to think for himself and as a response to do nothing. The narrator was the employer whose use of the repetitive and routine tasks of his profession caused him to lose compassion and responsibility. The change in the narrator that one can see take place over the course of the story brings these traits and the institutions that founded them into glaring clarity.