Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." Ah, Our Aching Eyes!

Herman Melville is most known for his whaling/boat fiction. He wrote several sea-based adventure-type novels that made him famous, but Moby Dick (1851) actually (though perhaps not surprisingly) decreased his popularity, and he died in relative obscurity as a writer (from Meyer, Michael, Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Bedford, 2012, 108). This piece was first printed in Putnam’s Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art, over Nov-Dec 1853, out of New York, of course.

“Bartleby” is a well-known anthology piece; I teach it in my introductory English class when we discuss character. However, it is a great piece for discussing all of the elements of literature, since it is so rich (students might use the term “lengthy” instead…). The setting, however, is really pertinent for our discussion today, since it occurs in New York, on Wall St., as the often-overlooked secondary title tells us. Melville himself in the text gives us the best context for describing Wall Street at this time:  “Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra [an ancient Arabian city whose ruins were discovered in 1821] and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn” (para. 90). As a setting, Wall Street, even that time, feels like an inhumane machine-like place, dedicated then and now to industry, where one can go to make money but not make friends.

But in addition to its rich characterization and apt setting, it also is a great story to use in lit classes for discussing point of view and the unreliable narrator, theme, symbolism, and style. So that is why I chose it and why it is our first day’s reading.

What fun to find out that I could get the text of “Bartleby” on a site called “Bartelby.com.” I think it says something for the piece that one of the first online reference and classical book sites on the web is named after it!  If I had to guess why, I’d pick the ending: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

Interesting fact! John Jacob Astor, noted in paragraph 3, was one of the first multi-millionaires; his great-great(?) grandson, John Jacob Astor IV, died on the Titanic with his pregnant wife; they were returning to NYC to have the child.

NOTE: your paragraph on “context” won’t necessarily be like this; my context for the story is discussing it in terms of literature, but yours might be where it comes from in the larger text, or more on the section of NY in which is it placed, etc. And note I don’t really have a summary at all; you might think it useful to include one, especially if you’re dealing with 100 pages of a longer text.

Questions for Discussion

1)    how does the lawyer’s description of himself characterize him? Are his judgments about others sound? What is significant about the fact that he is a lawyer?

2)    Why does Melville introduce Nippers, Turkey, and Ginger before Bartleby? What do we learn about the narrator form these characters?

3)    Who is the protagonist? The antagonist? Whose story is it? Who changes? Who grows?

4)    What are some other aspects of setting that are important?

5)    How is Wall Street a symbolic setting? How else are walls used as symbols? Are there other items in the story that might be considered symbols?

6)    How does point of view affect our understanding of Bartleby and of the lawyer? Why does POV matter so much to us as readers?

7)    Do you think Melville sympathizes more with Bartleby or the lawyer? What is his tone? With whom do you sympathize more?

8)    How would you characterize Melville’s style of writing? What IS style?

9)    How do you feel about that last paragraph Melville adds? Does it help us understand Bartleby?