40 pages • 1 hour read
Herman MelvilleBartleby, the Scrivener
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1853A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Function of Charity
Charity is a central theme throughout “Bartleby.” The concept of charity, or acts of charity, is present in the interactions between the lawyer and Turkey and Bartleby. The lawyer treats Turkey, perpetually impoverished and a man “of so small an income” (7), with patience for his eccentricities. The lawyer also offers Bartleby a place to stay in his home and gives him uninterrupted privacy behind his screen along with extra money.
Naturally wanting his employee to look presentable, and aware of the small amount he pays Turkey, the narrator gives Turkey one of his coats. Eventually, however, the narrator comes to believe having a nice thing is bad for Turkey. He compares Turkey to a horse: the coat is bad for Turkey “upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses” (17). After this incident, the narrator never gives Turkey anything beyond his pay.
Bartleby is the recipient of most of the narrator’s charity. However, this charity never improves Bartleby’s situation as he declines toward imprisonment and death. Despite the futility of his good works, the narrator congratulates himself on his charity and considers himself significantly more indulgent than most employers. Critics often read “Bartleby” as commentary on the underlying function of charity in a capitalist society. It makes the rich feel justified in their wealth without actually helping the poor.
Melville presents charity as a means of buying the feeling of virtuousness without materially improving the lives of those who receive it. If prosperity harms Turkey, for example, then there is no sense in paying him more. In the final interaction between the narrator and Bartleby, the narrator says that he is “keenly pained at his implied suspicion” (33) that he (the narrator) is somehow responsible for Bartley’s situation. The narrator then bribes the prison “grub-man” to feed Bartleby well as a final act of charity to the ex-scrivener. Bartleby prefers not to eat and dies of starvation several days later. The narrator uses futile charity to assuage his pain and remorse about Bartleby’s situation.
Literary Absurdity
Readers and critics often see “Bartleby” as a tale of absurdity in a white-collar workplace. Examples of absurdity include Bartleby’s constant preference “not to,” his unshakably calm demeanor, his reveries staring at a brick wall, and the greatly agitated natures of Nippers and Turkey, who act out at the same time each day. These are not the actions and dispositions we expect from real people. Absurdity often highlights and supports other themes in a work by stretching circumstances to extremes that are unrealistic in real life but become believable in the narrative’s world.
Melville uses absurdity to highlight the contrast between Bartleby’s harmlessness and the harm done to him. Although Bartleby is strange and at times unnerving, he is ultimately harmless and, in the narrator’s eyes, trustworthy and incapable of anything sinister. When the narrator stops by his offices on his way to church and first finds Bartleby alone in the narrator’s room, it is “out of the question” for the narrator to suspect Bartleby of anything devious or wrong (17). The trust placed in Bartleby by the narrator upon finding him alone in the office on a Sunday morning highlights Bartleby’s innocence, despite his absurd behavior.
The peculiar, clockwork agitation of the other two scriveners creates an atmosphere of hostility toward Bartleby and foreshadows his fatal end. Both Turkey and Nippers, whenever their respective foul moods descend on them, escalate the conflict with Bartleby for not performing his duties. Turkey attempts to harm Bartleby, who puts up no defense and is only saved by the narrator. This clockwork behavior also raises the topic of determinism; Nippers and Turkey cannot help being this way every day.
The tenants and landlord of the narrator’s old office building forcibly evict Bartleby into the stairwell. Eventually, authorities take him to the Tombs, a prison. The charge against him is that he is a “vagrant,” someone who stays in a place without paying rent or working for the right to be there. The opinions of the tenants and landlord fall in line with that of the narrator, who debated having Bartleby arrested for vagrancy but found himself in a bind since Bartleby was technically his employee. The agitated and fearful tone of the tenants and landlord suggest they regard Bartleby as dangerous even though he did nothing to harm them.
Even in prison, no one deems Bartleby dangerous or harmful. The prison wardens give him a free run of the prison, allowing him to roam wherever he pleases. True to his nature as an absurd character, Bartleby finds another brick wall to stare at until he dies. The narrator contrasts Bartleby to the murderers and thieves he imagines reside in the prison, reinforcing Bartleby’s harmless nature despite his odd behavior at the climax of the story.
Poverty and Pity
Melville’s narrator expresses his compassion for the plight of Bartleby. This pity is provoked by Bartleby’s poverty when the narrator discovers Bartleby is living in the office and has no family. The narrator expresses this pity through simile and metaphor. Whenever he pities Bartleby, he compares him to ruined buildings. When the narrator first attempts to bribe Bartleby to leave his office, he describes him as being “like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room” (23). When he discovers Bartleby’s blanket and wash basin in the office, the narrator imagines Bartleby as a historical figure “brooding among the ruins of Carthage” (18). In the climactic scene in the prison courtyard, the narrator compared the space to “the heart of the eternal pyramids,” and says that Bartleby sleeps alongside “kings and counselors” (34), referring to those entombed in actual pyramids.
Melville uses the theme of pity for the poor in two different ways. First, he ties pity to charity. The narrator is charitable toward Bartleby because he feels sorry for him and believes others would mistreat the scrivener. Second, Melville shows readers that the narrator’s pity can easily transform into different emotions: repulsion and fear. The narrator notes that “the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections” (19), but only to a certain point. Eventually, the narrator comes to believe that Bartleby is, he says, “the victim of innate and incurable disorder” (19). The narrator comes to believe that Bartleby’s misery is, like Turkey’s, incurable and in some sense the victim's fault.
The inner conflict of the narrator is rooted in the competing emotions of pity and disgust. His pity provokes his fear, and his fear provokes a certainty that Bartleby’s fate is sealed. The narrator thus eases his conscience without improving the lives of the people he pities. Melville uses this pessimistic lens to explain to readers why the narrator at once pities Bartleby and wishes to help yet ultimately abandons the scrivener.
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