Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Close Examination and Analysis

Bartleby is a sad loner hired by an elderly lawyer (the narrator) to work at his business that entails bonds, mortgages and titles. Bartleby is hired to copy text. Bartleby eventually and in a quiet and gracious manner refuses to do any requested work for the elderly lawyer. Bartleby is finally fired but refuses to leave. Bartleby haunts the office premises and causes continued dismay in the narrator of this story. Bartleby isolates himself physically and emotionally throughout this story. Bartleby slowly gives in to an internal psychological apathy that leads him to die. Bartleby, the Scrivener" is a story about the physical and mental degeneration of a man, an alienation of an individual from his own humanity.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" shows the reader the physical and mental deterioration of Bartleby through other people's eyes. Bartleby degenerates into offering passive resistance and causes the people around him to react in many different ways. It is in their words, actions or non-actions that we learn more about their principles and levels of compassion. This story makes a subtle point about conformity sometimes being basic for survival and avoidance of conflict being a natural reaction. The reader never knows who Bartleby really is; his spirit and motives remain a mystery. The narrator gives the reader words and actions in this story that show that Bartleby is psychologically unbalanced. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is a story about the physical and mental degeneration of a man, an alienation of an individual from his own humanity (Blake, 1978) (Bergmann, 2003) (Hunt, 1994) (Robertson, 1998) (Sundararajan, 1990).