LITERATURE AND THE CITY

            Among critics of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” are a common agreement on the story as a satire of mid-nineteenth century New York’s capitalism and Bartleby as a laughable caricature of civil disobedience. In the essay “Melville’s Radical Resistance: The Method and Meaning of Bartleby”, Kingsley Widmer suggests how readers should turn to an analysis of the narrator as the double of Bartleby: “the specter of rebellious and irrational human will, whose very existence he denies.” (448) Hence, he argues the meaning of the story lies in the narrator’s sympathy to Bartleby, which signals “the attempt to force benevolent rationalism against the realities of our forlorn and walled-in common humanity.” (458) For Widmer, the narrator’s benevolence to Bartleby is futile, and though the latter’s resistance is absurd, it is common to humanity. In contrast, I would argue that Widmer’s interpretation of the story overlooks the complexity of the characters’ choices in a society under the structure of capitalism, and thus ignores the possibility of readers’ identification with the characters. This essay puts Georg Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life” and Melville’s story in dialogue, in order to show how Melville establishes a critique of capitalism. Through an analysis of the response of the narrator to his scriveners, I will show the society is ideologically backward when put in comparison with Bartleby[1]. Furthermore, I will strengthen the argument of Bartleby as a tragic character through an analysis of the psychology behind his refusal to work.[2] Lastly, I will show how the ending of the story is a catharsis for the reality in which Bartleby is unable to escape from. Through these discussions, I will show how Melville’s construction of Bartleby evokes pity and fear among readers, which strengthens the existential crisis that informs people in a society haunted by capitalism.

            Melville’s society is ideologically backward because the capitalistic society does not respect individual natures. Simmel suggests how the metropolis is a multi-variegated single entity that requires the cooperation of each individual like a machine: “If all the watches in Berlin suddenly went wrong in different ways even only as much as an hour, its entire economic and commercial life would be derailed for some time.” (13) Simmel imagines that the city would be dysfunctional with human error. On the other hand, through a description of the narrators’ employers, Melville complicates the problem of the money economy in the metropolis from an individual perspective, as the division of labor does not optimize for each worker’s personality. Turkey does not have a calm demeanor to be a scrivener, since “he was apt to be altogether too energetic.” (Melville 116); Nippers has “a grand air” as he at times was “considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices’ courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs.” (Melville 118); Ginger Nut sources food for his colleagues since he likes to eat: “On a cold morning, when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers” (Melville 119). The three employees are deficient, not in their personalities, but because the job nature of a scrivener does not match what they like to do, yet they are typical of the “metropolitan type which reacts primarily in a rational manner furthest removed from the depths of the personality” (Simmel 12). Thus, the metropolis does not allow the opportunity for people to develop their true natures. As the narrator justifies at the beginning of the story that it is important to introduce his employees: “because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented” (Melville 114), Melville suggests that the scriveners serve as a foil to show how Bartleby does not react as the “metropolitan type” (Simmel 12) does. The narrator is “an eminently safe man” (Melville 114), he represents people in power who do not want threats from the outside, and “passionate hatred for individual expressions” (Simmel 14) would rise. Unlike Widmer who argues that “goodness as ‘mere self-interest reveals the obtuseness of such rationality and the brutality of such decency.” (455), we can understand how the narrator is a product of socialization from the teachings of Bible, or the New York moneymaking environment[3]. We must also sympathize with the narrator. It is Melville’s society that is not ready to accept the scriveners’ individual personalities, nor Bartleby’s later rebellion to the society.

            Apart from the flaw of the society, Bartleby is a tragic character as he challenges the society, when he interacts with the society with his true character of having no preference. Bartleby’s duality lies in that he does not calculate what he wants, but seems to calculate his own fate. Looking back on Simmel’s idea of the “modern mind” (13), he suggests that “the conditions of the metropolis which are cause as well as effect for this essential characteristic” (13). Yet, the narrator does not exploit Bartleby, so it is not the reason he calculates. In fact, Bartleby shows that he wants to gain nothing from the society. In the last conversation between the narrator and Bartleby, while the narrator suggests alternative ways of being at work, and even invites him to his own home, he responds: “I am not particular.” (Melville 142) and repeats “I would prefer not.” (Melville 143) which echoes the previous conversations with the narrator. When Bartleby finally chooses not to eat and pace himself to death, he shows the “aversion of the individual of a type and degree of personal freedom to which there is no analogy in other circumstances” (Simmel 15). However, in order to gain this freedom, Bartleby possesses some error of judgment as he would rather die than to live. Even though he is free to change jobs in the free economy, he does not do so. Also, he does not voice out what he wants when the narrator keeps asking him for his preference. His flaw is his inability to communicate while having strong resistance to the options available in the society, leading to his eventual death. But it is also a flaw which Simmel recognizes as “what freedom is”: “that we follow the laws of our inner nature… that becomes perceptible and convincing to us and to others only when the expressions of this nature distinguish us from others; it is our irreplaceability by others which shows that our mode of existence is not imposed upon us from the outside.” (17), once again it shows how Bartleby is more ideologically advanced in the inner life than his society.

            The ending of the story is a catharsis for the reality in which Bartleby is unable to escape from. Catharsis is “the purification of the emotions by vicarious experience” (OED), and the narrator has a sense of deep pity and sadness for Bartleby through the knowledge of his experience in the Dead Letter Office. Widmer suggests how the ending is an “indulgence in sentimentality” (457), and is a “failure in the story” (457). However, Melville prepares the readers for what Widmer calls the “failure” early on in the story: “Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small.” (Melville 114) Just as a prologue for a tragedy, Melville indicates how Bartleby is pitiful from the start. The last part of the story, as a clear “epilogue” through the page break in the structure, introduces itself as a “strange suggestive interest” (Melville 147) of Bartleby once working in the Dead Letter Office. Then after a description of the whole scenario of Bartleby working there, he exclaims: “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” (Melville 147) This shows a progression of an inability to recognize Bartleby’s pitiful state, and slowly recognizes the “pallid hopelessness” (Melville 147) of Bartleby as he becomes one of the “dead letters” (Melville 147) which is not an “original source” (Melville 114) as nobody cares to put value into it anymore. In the last exclamation, the narrator equates Bartleby and humanity, where the latter includes himself. Thus, there is a completion of the catharsis, since the narrator realizes that he and Bartleby are the same, yet Bartleby is unable to live. Just as how Simmel suggests to the readers that we should understand the historical of the metropolis as “our task not to complain or to condone but only to understand” (Simmel 19), the narrator empathizes with Bartleby through a catharsis for the reality in which the latter is unable to escape from, which completes the tragedy.

            All in all, through an analysis of the response of the narrator to his scriveners, this essay shows that the society is ideologically backward. Bartleby is a tragic character and the ending of the story is a catharsis for the reality in which Bartleby is unable to escape from. It can only be certain that the tale of Bartleby is one that moves readers through the pity and sadness it evokes in his mental poverty. [1] This essay focuses on how Bartleby is an example of Aristotle’s tragic hero. Britannica Academic explains the tragic hero in possession of certain characteristics. A tragic hero often has some error of judgment (harmartia). Melville’s society, I will prove, produces Bartleby’s error of judgment.[2] Bartleby as a tragic hero is never passive but struggles to resolve his tragic difficulty with an obsessive dedication (hubris). He himself is ignorant of his own human limitation. [3] Barbara Foley argues how historicizing Melville’s tale in “the mid-nineteenth century class struggles in New York is indispensible” (88), as Melville expresses “contempt for bourgeois moral cowardice and an admission of his own identification with this quality.” (103). From an authorial perspective, Foley encourages us to sympathize with the narrator in a realization of the flaw of the society.

[1] This essay focuses on how Bartleby is an example of Aristotle’s tragic hero. Britannica Academic explains the tragic hero in possession of certain characteristics. A tragic hero often has some error of judgment (harmartia). Melville’s society, I will prove, produces Bartleby’s error of judgment.

[2] Bartleby as a tragic hero is never passive but struggles to resolve his tragic difficulty with an obsessive dedication (hubris). He himself is ignorant of his own human limitation.

[3] Barbara Foley argues how historicizing Melville’s tale in “the mid-nineteenth century class struggles in New York is indispensible” (88), as Melville expresses “contempt for bourgeois moral cowardice and an admission of his own identification with this quality.” (103). From an authorial perspective, Foley encourages us to sympathize with the narrator in a realization of the flaw of the society.