Bartleby, The Scrivener

Bartleby, The Scrivener (53)

From Wikimedia

"Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap."

I feel like there is much more going on in this passage than one might first think. Having read the story I have many feelings about what the text is meant to embody, but I will stick to the individual feelings I had about this particulars section -for the most part- (R.53).


I think Melville really wanted to convey his own distaste for the methods with which society approaches anything that falls outside the norm. The lawyer in the story is quite self righteous and arrogant in his viewing of Bartleby.  The story directly conveys the fact that he is driven more by the way people see him, than he is his own motivations.  I don’t think the lawyer is intended to seem malicious, I simply think that of his own explanation, he simply doesn't care about Bartleby in the least. Openly stating that he can “cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval,” it seems to indicate that to this man acts of charity are for the sake of one’s own feelings. It’s as if Melville really wanted to point out the fact that charity for  image sake is repulsive. The way he wrote the lawyer, saying things like “Poor fellow” about Bartleby imply to me that not only is the lawyer self serving and totally insincere; but also that he sees himself as possessing great intellect. As if he is some higher being looking down at his poor creations, so far removed from the thing he observes. In fact during the passage, the lawyer mentions what would happen to Bartleby had he "turned him away," the way it's worded, it's not about Bartleby's interests; it comes off as just another praise of his own intellect and moral high ground. I think we are supposed to detest the lawyer, like Melville is specifically writing a story about how not to think. I also go the impression that when the lawyer states that he “felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition,” he is being honest about how he really feels about Bartleby. Like Bartleby is literally a subhuman thing that he has a serious distaste for. Mind you he would never say such things aloud for fear of not seeming compationate, but a lot of the passage indicates that he isn’t really compassionate at all. I think the lawyer is an embodiment of what Melville views as society. I think he’s trying to point out the way we all act toward anyone or anything that rocks the boat. we feign the required interest, and go through the motions of making it look like we care. Then if that doesn't work, we get angry at whatever the subject is, for being an exception to the norm; we approach the disturbance as an adversary, there to destroy our very way of life. After that fails, we throw money at it, we ignore it, and finally we find a way to lock it away. We must of course do this in a way that leaves us with a clear conscience, so we do so, and then do our best to forget about it. These are all the things I see in the totality of the story. I believe that Melville really wanted us to take a look at just how poorly we handle anything different. This in turn makes me wonder if Melville himself isn't the outsider. As if in a really subtle way, Bartleby isn't just Melville's take on himself.


Bartleby, The Scrivener. A Story of Wall-street, by Herman Melville. First published 1853

On a totally tangent side note: I found this article by cracked.com strangely informative.