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Wealth and Morality: Herman Melville
Lesson Plan

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Herman_Melville_1860.jpg/407px-Herman_Melville_1860.jpg

Introduction
While best known for his multifaceted novel Moby Dick (took me four tries to read, but since then, can't stop rereading it), due to length limitations, we'll be focusing on his short stories.

While some of the stories we've read touch on class and money, Melville is the first writer we read to explore it through many stories. If, like me, your early exposure to U.S. history centered on pilgrims at thanksgivings, a series of wars, and then our current president, you'll be as surprised as I was when I first read the following from Lydia Maria Child's 1843 Letters from New York:

In Wall-Street, and elsewhere, Mammon, as usual, coolly calculates his chance of extracting a penny from war, pestilence, and famine, and Commerce, with her loaded drays, and jaded skeletons of horses, is busy as ever fulfilling the 'World's contract with the Devil.' . . . I have often anathematized the spirit of Trade, which reigns triumphant, not only on 'Change, but in our halls of legislation, and even in our churches. Thought is sold under the hammer, and sentiment, in its holiest forms, stands labeled for the market. Love is offered to the highest bidder, and sixpences are given to purchase religion for starving souls. In view of these things, I sometimes ask whether the Age of Commerce is better than the age of War? Whether our 'merchant princes' are a great advance upon feudal chieftains? Whether it is better for the many to be prostrated by force, or devoured by cunning? (qtd. in Curti 378)

Melville shared Child's suspicion of the influence of money, particularly its debilitating effects on relationships. The first story, as its subtitle "A Story of Wall Street" suggests, is a subtle exploration of the forces of economics and the forces of personalities.

The second, taking place in the nautical milieu Melville was so familiar with, is another subtle exploration of slavery, freedom, democracy, and misperception. . . and that's merely scratching at the surface.

Notice how I used the word "subtle" twice? That was by design. Melville's fiction was not written for a media-saturated, please-me-quick-before-I-get-bored age. Like modern literature, it's character driven, which means we have to examine motives and reactions and ponder their meanings. More reflective than reactive, at times gently humorous, it rewards those who give it the attention it deserves.

Terms and People to Know
And OED definition may be helpful here

Hermit: 1. a. One who from religious motives has retired into solitary life; esp. one of the early Christian recluses.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106 - 43 bc) Sometimes referred to as Tully, the supreme Latin orator and prose writer. He delivered his first speech in 81, and became praetor in 66, and consul in 63, at the earliest permitted age. As consul, he repressed the insurrection planned by Catiline, executing his associates without trial. When civil war came, in 49, he reluctantly took Pompey's side. After Pompey's defeat Cicero was pardoned by Caesar, whose advances he rebuffed, and whose assassination he welcomed. At Mark Antony's insistence, Cicero was killed, and his severed head and hands were nailed to the Rostra (the orators' platform in the Roman Forum).

In the intervals of public life Cicero was a prolific writer. His works include a large number of speeches; treatises on rhetoric; collections of letters to Atticus and other friends; and philosophical dialogues on politics, ethics, epistemology, and religion. He was an important transmitter of Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism, to Rome, and the creator of a Latin philosophical vocabulary. His influence on thought and expression from the Middle Ages to the 19th century was enormous. His rhetorical works, rediscovered in the 15th century, and his philosophical dialogues were essentials of humanist education. The long tradition of reading Cicero as an honorary Christian was challenged in the 18th century, particularly by David Hume. See Robert Harris's Imperium (2006), a lively fictionalized account of the early years of Cicero's career.

"Cicero, Marcus Tullius." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Eds. Dinah Birch and Katy Hooper. Oxford University Press, 2013, Oxford Reference,https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199608218.001.0001/acref-9780199608218-e-1565, accessed 7 Dec. 2023

Gospel According to Matthew

25:34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
25:35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
25:36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
25:37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
25:38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
25:39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

American values circa 2011: dated but holds up pretty well.

Life
See textbook for quick biography.

Interested in Melville's best work, Moby Dick? Check out this radio show.

Times
The following excerpts give a flavor of the period

From The Almighty Dollar! or The Brilliant Exploits of a Killer, a Romance of Old Quakerdelphia. Philadelphia, 1847. Rpt. in Notions of the Americans 1820-1860. Ed. David Grimsted. New York: George Braziller, 1970. 245-259.

"aristocrats." From their "Constitution:" "Society is so framed, and the DOLLAR has become such a mighty engine, and those who have wealth have power, and those who have poser will be sure to abuse it . . . . Therefore, it is apparent that the rich want a signal estrangement from the people, and WE, the people, swear an eternal estrangement, a deadly enmity, a war of extermination against the aristocrats, the plunder and burning of their property, and all the mischief that can be concocted and executed against those overbearing and self-styled demigods" (Almighty 251).

Titcomb, Timothy. [Joshia G. Holland]. Titcomb's Letters to Young People Single and Married. New

York: Charles Scribner & Co., 1868.

"There is no surer sign of an unmanly and cowardly spirit than a vague desire for help; a wish to depend, to lean upon somebody, and enjoy the fruits of the industry of others. There are multitudes of young men, I suppose, who indulge in dreams of help from some quarter, coming in at a convenient moment. . . . some benevolent old gentlemen with a pocket full of money . . . who will, perhaps, give or lend them anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars" (Titcomb 16).

"It is the general rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Providence, that the process of earning success shall be the preparation 20 for its conservation and enjoyment" (Titcomb 19-20).

Lippard, George. New York: Its Upper Ten and Lower Million. Cincinnati: H. M. Rulison, 1854.

'Thus far toward freedom! Here they come, -- three hundred serfs of the Atlantic cities, rescued from poverty, from wages-slavery, from the war of competition, from the grip of the landlord! Thus far toward a soil which they can call their own; thus far toward a free home. And thou, O! Christ, who didst live and die, so that all men might be brothers, bless us, and be with us, and march by our side, in this our exodus.’

The speaker was the socialist, -- Arthur Dermoyne.

And let us all, as we survey the masses of the human race, attempting their exodus from thraldom of all kinds, -- of the body, -- of the soul, -- from the tyranny which crushes man by the iron hand of brute force, or slowly kills him by the lawful operation of capital, labor-saving machinery, or monied enterprise,-- let us, too, send up our prayer, -- 'O! THOU of Nazareth, go with the People in this their exodus, dwell with them in their tents, beacon with light, their hard way to the Promised Land!’" (Lippard New York 283-84)

Class Discussion

Who's telling the story? What's his job? What's his character? How does his character effect his decisions? Who does he admire?
Nicknames -- who has them: who doesn't? What difference does it make?
How are Bartleby and the narrator similar? How are they different?
Is it significant that a lawyer is telling the story?
What is the significance of the subtitle "A Story of Wall Street?"
Who is the protagonist?
What is the significance of walls in the story?
What is the significance of writing in the story?
Who changes in the story and how and why?
Why does the narrator become so attached to Bartleby? Point to specific passages which show this.
Analyze the passage on page 921 starting "My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy . . . ." What is the narrator talking about? Does this occur often?
What are Bartleby's physical characterisitcs? Do they suit his personality? Does he stay the same or regress?
When does the narrator finally lose patience with Bartleby? Why? (931) because he finally talks
What's the importance of the subtitle?
Why does Bartleby tell the narrator: "I know you . . . and I want nothing to say to you." Why does he not want to talk?
What is the significance of Bartleby ending up the "the Tombs"? -- and be sure to check the bottom of 933 before answering the question.
Why does the narrator end his story by linking Bartleby with "humanity?"
For whom does Melville want us to feel sympathy for? How can you tell?
What is this story saying about alienation and isolation?
What's the definition of passivity?
What's the definition of passive/aggressive? How does it apply here?
How is Bartleby a subversive character? Think of the 60's and the civil rights non-violence movement. Example of person not admitting his name or who he worked for about filling up the dumpster with carpets.
Walter Sokel, in a commentary on Kafka's The Metamorphosis, makes a connection b/t Marxism and the alienation of repetitive work that I think bears consideration with "Bartleby"

Only where work appears as its own reward are human beings truly human. Where it is imposed by economic necessity, the worker is not merely alienated from himself as an individual; he is estranged from his humanity. Marx's idea of human self-alienation is not restricted to factory work, but includes any kind of work in which an individual is engaged merely for the wage or income it beings him. The worker is dehumanized wherever his work fails to involve his creative urge and desire. (Sokel 106)

Narrator

• How are Bartleby and the narrator similar? How are they different?

• Who's telling the story? What's his job? What's his character? How does his character effect his decisions? Who does he admire?

• Is it significant that a lawyer is telling the story?

• Analyze the passage on page 2375 starting "My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy . . . ." What is the narrator talking about? What does this illustrate about him? How does it connect with the earlier line? "The bond of a common humanity now drew me irrestibly to gloom" (2375);

• Why does the narrator become so attached to Bartleby? Point to specific passages which show this: 2373 his loneliness on Sunday; 2381*** religion and the "commandment" -- connected to this his providential view of Bartleby " I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content" (2382)

• But all of this religious ("blessed frame of mind" 2348) good will vanishes under the pressure of conformity -- and business. Bartleby becomes, instead of "harmless" (2348) an "intolerable incubus" (2349).

• Why does the narrator defer to him: 2375 -- Bartleby exhibits a "pallid haughtiness" which makes the narrator step back; in other words, a bit of class snobbery is at play here cf. "calm disdain" (2343)

• When does the narrator finally lose patience with Bartleby? Why? (2352) because he finally talks

• The narrator feels "afflictive" (2378)

Bartleby

• What are Bartleby's physical characterisitcs? Do they suit his personality? Does he stay the same or regress?

• What's the importance of the subtitle?

• Language -- note the narrator calls Bartleby's screen his "hermitage" (2370) -- why? What are the associations of this word?

• Why does Bartleby tell the narrator: "I know you . . . and I want nothing to say to you" (2386). Why does he not want to talk?

• What is the significance of Bartleby ending up the "the Tombs"? and why does he end up in a yeard with "Egyptian character" at "The heart of the eternal pyramids" (2388). What does this invest his death with (see earlier comments about his character)?

• Why does the narrator end his story by linking Bartleby with "humanity?"

Theme

• The key here seems "humanity" (how can we tell this is the key? 2375 "sons of Adam", 2381 "a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations", 2381*** "commandment", last line) and the Christian view of brotherly love and compassion. How far can it be stretched? Where does it stop?

• but finally, it's an enigmatic story -- we can't know all.

• For whom does Melville want us to feel sympathy for? How can you tell?

• What is this story saying about alienation and isolation?

• How is Bartleby a subversive character? Think of the 60's and the civil rights non-violence movement. Example of person not admitting his name or who he worked for about filling up the dumpster with carpets.

• What's the significance of the title?

• Why a law office -- why not a clerk in a store?

• Story of money: 2382; -- note when the narrator gets tough:

• 2372 "You will not?" / "I prefer not." What's the difference?

• Reasons why the narrator gets angry with Bartleby: Bartleby "unmanned me" (2374) -- makes him less of a man.

• What could Bartleby be a symbol of?

• What does the last line of the story do?

• How is Bartleby's death foreshadowed?

• Why a "wall"?

• What, symbolically, is suggested by Bartleby's "dead wall reveries" ?

• What is the significance of writing in the story?

• Explain why Melville has Bartleby work in a "dead letter" office.

• Could the "dead letters" be a metaphor for authorship? Is this Melville's "Letter to the World"? It is very similar to the Dickinson poem #441.

One of the first sites that posted HTML copies of literature was called Bartleby

Description of office emphasizes walls -- like "the Tombs" this is a place of the dead.

Note description of his first appearance: "a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now--pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby" (2368)
"I should have been quite delighted with his application, had be been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically." (2368) Why does he have to be happy at his work?
"moonstruck" 2369 "luny" 2371
"unmanned" twice on 2374 -- why? What's the connotation
OED "hermitage." Hermit is mentioned several times -- why? What's the connotation?
Why the long descriptions of Turkey and Nippers? What do they establish before we meet Bartleby? THAT THE LAWYER IS TOLERANT
" Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance." 2371 -- why? Why does this aggravate people?
"made him a valuable acquisition" (2372) -- wage slave -- a commodity to be bought and sold on Wall St . -- and note which scene this sets up: the Sunday scene when we see how empty Bartleby's life is
Reason v. feeling. Lawyers live on reason. This is a story about the development of humanity.

WHAT DO LAWYERS FOCUS ON? REASON OR FEELING? WHAT DOES UNDERSTANDING BARTLEBY AS A PERSON RELY ON, REASON OR FEELING? GO TO 2380 -- WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH HIS APPROACH? -- FROM THIS GO TO RELIGION.

Crucial line

"For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings--chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain--led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener's pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet." 2375

Why is this the "first time" he has felt melancholy? (SEE SNUG EARLIER) Now he connects to humanity? What has done this?

Narrator "reasons" to remove Bartleby -- not thinking of Bartleby's feelings 2379
"A FTER breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con. One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering about." 2379
"I resolved to argue the matter over with him again" (2380) -- again, using logic to decide a matter of feeling
"What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button. What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I should do with this man, or rather ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall. But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal,--you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door? you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that." 2383

WHY USE THE WORD CONSCIENCE HERE??

"something from within me upbraided me" IS THIS SOMETHING IS THIS SOMETHING WITHIN HIM LOGIC OR FEELING? HOW CAN YOU TELL?
WHY THE LAST LINE "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"

Narrator abuses his privacy -- after the comments on humanity, it seems a bit odd to dig in his desk.
Repetition of "pallid" for Bartleby -- why? What does this connote? 2375, 2368. DEATH -- CF "WINDING SHEET" 2375; "cadaverous" (2377)

Could the story be a parable about death? "permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me"? (2380)
Dead letter office

RELIGION

OED hermitage
"What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach." (2376) NOTE THAT AFTER THIS HE DOESN'T GO TO TRINITY CHURCH .
Trying to pay his way out of trouble -- wants to give Bartleby a 20. (2376) -- for the narrator, all of life is money: but Bartleby presents a problem to him: some problems on Wall St. can't be solved with cash.
"strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind." (2377) It's a kind of sin -- "superstitious" coming after Trinity church
"What earthly right have you to stay here?" NONE AT ALL. IT'S NOT EARTH/REASON
"Why, simply by recalling the divine injunction: "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another." Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle--a great safeguard to its possessor." THIS IS WHAT THE NARRATOR NEEDS TO WORK TOWARDS -- TRULY LOVING SOMEONE ELSE.
"Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence , which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At least I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain." 2382

IS IT GOD OR MAMMON THAT WILL WIN OUT?

"I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms.[. . . .] scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises;"2382

MAMMON WINS

Comic touches --

Bartleby getting mobbed 2377 also shows he understands what's going on around him;
Narrator prides himself for "getting rid of Bartleby" 2379; but he doesn't.

"Do you not see the reason for yourself" (2378) -- it's not so clear, either for the narrator or for the reader. What is the reason? Though note that the narrator does come up with a reason. Why? Why does the narrator focus on his eyes?
Bartleby's infecting others

Everyone saying prefer 2377
Mention of name 2379

Narrator becomes responsible for Bartleby -- 2384 -- "they held me to the terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the papers".
Narrator does finally acknowledge his duty: "Bartleby," said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, "will you go home with me now--not to my office, but my dwelling--and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away." 2385 BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FOLLOWING LINE "my conscience justified me in the attempt; though indeed it was not so successful as I could have wished" THIS SUGGESTS HE STILL FEELS GUILT -- NOTE LINE FROM THE TOMBS "I though I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves" (2386)

Group Questions

Group Questions #1

After Bartleby announces he will no longer copy, he tells the narrator, "Do you not see the reason for yourself?" (1498/2378). What's the reason? Is the narrator's response the only possible reason?
What's the significance of the following quote to the story?

Only where work appears as its own reward are human beings truly human. Where it is imposed by economic necessity, the worker is not merely alienated from himself as an individual; he is estranged from his humanity. Marx's idea of human self-alienation is not restricted to factory work, but includes any kind of work in which an individual is engaged merely for the wage or income it beings him. The worker is dehumanized wherever his work fails to involve his creative urge and desire. (Sokel 106)
On page 1492/2371 the narrator thinks, regarding his behavior towards Bartleby, "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 prove a sweet morsel for my conscience." What kind of rationale is this? What's odd about the language he uses to describe this?
Does Bartleby change over the course of the story? Consider his responses to the narrator. Does the narrator change over the course of the story?
Why does the lawyer eventually act and move to get away from Bartleby? What do these motives reveal about his character? What does Melville suggest about society through his actions?
For whom does Melville want us to feel sympathy for? Why does he want us to feel sympathy for this person? Consider the narrator's reaction to Bartleby's comment: "'I know you,' he said, without looking round,-- 'and I want nothing to say to you.'" (1507/2386)
The literary critic Leo Marx makes an interesting connection to Transcendentalism and the story. He writes that "In fact writers like Nippers and Turkey are incapable of action, a trait carefully reserved for Bartleby, the lawyer, and the social system itself (acting through various agencies, the lawyers' clients, the landlord, and the police). Bartleby represents the only real, if ultimately ineffective, threat to society; his experience gives some support to Henry Thoreau's view that one lone intransigent man can shake the foundations of our institutions." Is this true? Is Bartleby -- who doesn't seem to do anything, a threat to society? How could he connect to Thoreau's or Emerson's ideas?

Images From the Past

From http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK9283-0002-230

Putnam's Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art. / Volume 2, Issue 11 page 546 November 1853

Links

A good starting place for Melville links is D. Campbell's site at Washington State University

Quotes from Critics

Five Easy Pieces

1) "Bartleby" has been seen first as a "parable of walls," a depiction of "self" as irrecoverably immured and unfree, and thereby a companion piece to Franz Kafka 's The Trial (1925), Albert Camus 's The Plague (1947), or Samuel Beckett 's Waiting For Godot (1952).

2) Other interpreters look at "Bartleby" more as a quasi-religious fable, Bartleby himself as the spurned Christ or Buddha, and his eventual muteness as the token of God's inscrutable withdrawal from, or irrelevance to, the world.

3) Less cosmically, it has been argued that "Bartleby" offers a classic portrait of catatonia or schizophrenia, in which copyist and lawyer constitute divided facets of a single personality, a doppelganger story in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe 's "William Wilson" (1839) or Henry James 's "The Jolly Corner" (1908).

4) Or, "Bartleby" is a story of Wall Street, in which this business epicenter of nineteenth-century America is seen as murderous to the human creative spirit, a site only of commodification and of the fetish of property and profit.

5) A much favored recent interpretation sees the story as deeply autobiographical. Bartleby functions as a surrogate for Melville himself, that is, Melville as a scrivener who "would prefer not" to "check his copy" and write to the required norm. His books, too, at least Mardi and Pierre , had quickly enough become "dead letters," left to dust and obscurity in out-of-the-way libraries.

"Herman Melville," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 74: American Short-Story Writers Before 1880 . A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Bobby Ellen Kimbel, Pennsylvania State University, Ogontz Campus and William E. Grant, Bowling Green State University. The Gale Group, 1988, pp. 249-267.

Melville's analysis of Bartleby's predicament may be appallingly detached, but it is by no means unsympathetic. When he develops the contrast between a man like Bartleby and the typical American writers of his age there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. The other copyists in the office accept their status as wage earners. The relations between them are tinged by competitiveness--even their names, "Nippers" and " Turkey ," suggest "nip and tuck.'' Nevertheless they are not completely satisfactory employees; they are "useful" to the lawyer only half of the time. During half of each day each writer is industrious and respectful and compliant; during the other half he tends to be recalcitrant and even mildly rebellious. But fortunately for their employer these half-men are never aggressive at the same time, and so he easily dominates them, he compels them to do the sort of writing he wants, and has them "verify the accuracy" of their work according to his standard. When Bartleby's resistance begins they characteristically waver between him and the lawyer. Half the time, in their "submissive" moods ("submission" is their favorite word as "prefer" is Bartleby's), they stand with the employer and are incensed against Bartleby, particularly when his resistance inconveniences them; the rest of the time they mildly approve of his behavior, since it expresses their own ineffectual impulses toward independence. Such are the writers which the society selects and, though not too lavishly, rewards.

One of Melville's finest touches is the way he has these compliant and representative scriveners, though they never actually enlist in Bartleby's cause, begin to echo his "prefer" without being aware of its source. So does the lawyer. "Prefer" is the nucleus of Bartleby's refrain, "I prefer not to," and it embodies the very essence of his power. It simply means "choice," but it is backed up, as it clearly is not in the case of the other copyists, by will. And it is in the strength of his will that the crucial difference between Bartleby and other writers lies. When Nippers and Turkey use the word "prefer" it is only because they are unconsciously imitating the manner, the surface vocabulary of the truly independent writer; they say ''prefer," but in the course of the parable they never make any real choices. In their mouths "prefer" actually is indistinguishable from "submission"; only in Bartleby's does it stand for a genuine act of will. In fact writers like Nippers and Turkey are incapable of action, a trait carefully reserved for Bartleby, the lawyer, and the social system itself (acting through various agencies, the lawyers' clients, the landlord, and the police). Bartleby represents the only real, if ultimately ineffective, threat to society; his experience gives some support to Henry Thoreau's view that one lone intransigent man can shake the foundations of our institutions.

--Leo Marx, "Melville's Parable of the Walls," The Sewanee Review 61, no. 4 (Autumn 1953): pp. 602-627

Bartleby is Tocqueville's democratic individual, cut off from family, class, and community. He is "locked in the solitude of his own heart." He is the man, "himself alone," "not tied to time or place," that Tocqueville imagined as the subject of democratic art. Bartleby is alone not in nature, as Tocqueville predicted the hero of American poetry would be, but in the lonely crowd. Melville uses the paltry details of American life, which Tocqueville thought were artistically refractory, to make an aesthetic form.

The lawyer introduces his office by calling "spacious" the skylight shaft between his window and the white wall. "What landscape painters call 'life,'" he remarks, is visible through the opposing window, in the "lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spyglass to bring out its lurking beauties." No spyglass is needed because that wall ''was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes." As the narrator finds life and variety in the view from his office, the words Melville puts into his mouth call that space a "cistern." The narrator's feeble, novelistic efforts, Melville is pointing out, are false to reality on Wall Street.

The lawyer's attempt to humanize his environment gives Bartleby his negative power. It is not so much the scrivener's withdrawal from life that need explaining, as the way in which he draws in the narrator, the other employees, and the reader. The story hints at a social explanation for Bartleby's influence, and insists on a psychological one.

--Michael P. Rogin, "Melville and the Slavery of the North" in Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1983): p. 112.

"Bartleby" is written in a calm, even droll diction whose deliberate application to an infamous subject matter seems to prefigure Kafka. Nevertheless, between both fictions, there is a secret, central affinity. In the former, Ahab's monomania disturbs and finally destroys all the men on the boat (in translating Melville's novel into his own view of it, Borges ignores the survival of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick [trans.]); in the latter, Bartleby's frank nihilism contaminates his companions and even the stolid man who tells Bartleby's story, the man who pays him for his imaginary labors. It is as if Melville had written: "It is enough that one man is irrational for others to be irrational and for the universe to be irrational." The history of the universe teems with confirmation, of this fear.

"Bartleby" belongs to the volume entitled The Piazza Tales (New York and London, 1856). About another narrative in that book, John Freeman observes that it could not be fully understood until Joseph Conrad published certain analogous works, almost half a century later. I would observe that the work of Kafka projects a curious, hind light on "Bartleby." "Bartleby'' already defines a genre that Kafka would re-invent and quarry around 1991: the genre of fantasies of conduct and feeling or, as it is unfortunately termed today, the psychological. Beyond that, the opening pages of "Bartleby" do not foreshadow Kafka; rather, they allude to or repeat Dickens. . . . In 1849, Melville had published Mardi , an entangled and even unreadable novel, but one whose basic argument anticipates the obsessions and the mechanism of The Castle, The Trial and Amerika: it presents an infinite persecution across an infinite sea.

--Jorge Luis Borges, "Prologue to Herman Melville's 'Bartleby'" in Latin American Literature and Art 17 (Spring 1976): pp. 8-9.

Though until now no one has noticed the parallel between the narrator's struggle to explain Bartleby and the Puritans' persecution of the witches in Salem , a number of critics have pointed out the desperate tautology of the narrator's questions, which try to constitute their own answers even as they seek them. In his excellent article of 1965, Norman Springer noted that the "narrator's occupation, his immediate concerns and his total profession, can be seen as his attempt to make meaning where there is no meaning," and three years earlier Kingsley Widmer portrayed the specific forms of the narrator's effort as representative of a particular moment in American intellectual history:

Bartleby reveals the confession of a decent, prudent, rational "liberal" who finds in his chambers of consciousness the incomprehensible, perverse, irrational demon of denial, and of his own denied humanity. . . . He does his best and attempts to exorcise that rebellious and infuriating image with conventional assumptions, authority, utility, legalism, religious orthodoxy, prudent charity, flight, and, at the end, sentimental reverence. . . . The attempt to wryly force benevolent American rationalism to an awareness of our forlorn and walled-in humanity provides the larger purpose of the tale.

I believe these readings are right, up to point. They correctly indicate the coercive nature of the narrator's questions, and they show how the theological concept of the invisible world had been supplanted as a disciplinary mechanism by the various modes of thought Widmer lists. But they do not ask a rather obvious question: why does the narrator fail in his exorcism of this rebel image when everyone else in the story succeeds? After all, the narrator "was not unemployed in his profession by the late John Jacob Astor," and as a lawyer he is proficient in the discourse by which Wall Street operates. Yet everyone knows what to do with Bartleby except him. The second time Bartleby refuses to proofread some legal copy, for example, the narrator is confounded: " Why do you refuse?" he asks, and Bartleby replies as usual, "I would prefer not to.'' "With any other man," the narrator claims, "I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him." Bartleby, of course, continues to prefer not to, and the narrator calls on his clerks Turkey and Nippers: "'Nippers' said I, 'what do you think of it' 'I think I should kick him out of the office," Nippers replies, it being morning and, hence, an ill-tempered time for Nippers because of his indigestion.

--Michael Clark, "Witches and Wall Street: Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law" in Texas Studies in Literature and Language 25, no. 1 (Spring 1983): pp. 55-76.

The Lawyer is, however, quite a lawyer. He is given to what Herbert F. Smith calls "stunning examples of legal periphrasis." Smith maybe stretches a little too far when he asserts that Turkey and Nippers are amici curiae who "balance each other out like contrasting paragraphs on a contract," but the simile is faithful to the informing rhetoric of the story as a whole. Smith asserts that the word "prefer" is ''exquisitely chosen" to suggest "bearing before" or "setting before" in the matter of consequential choice. It is also apposite to the situation of equity pleading as opposed to common law pleading." Scholars may argue over how much we should see in the Lawyer's references to "Edwards on the Will" and "Priestly on Necessity," but Smith points out that "these very philosophic sounding titles are also perfectly appropriate as legal titles, especially for the purposes of equity pleading. All one need do is accept the pun on 'will' as 'testament' and 'necessity' in its legal sense, as cause in hardship. Both terms were common to equity pleading at the time of the writing of the story." "The doctrine of assumptions" is the subject of "a bravura punning performance" in which "assume" and "assumption" occur a dozen times in two paragraphs.

In these figures of legal rhetoric we hear a man giving a formal speech and talking to himself. His legal vocabulary impedes what he wants to say, but it is all he has to say it with. A rich and impressive comedy lies in the disjunction between all the absurdly insistent legalisms and the naked human tragedy of Bartleby. The narrator's diction is highly inappropriate. Bartleby's simple declaration keeps making that abundantly clear to him. So, the more his legal vocabulary does not work, the more the narrator uses it; intensifying it is his way of raising his voice. He cannot answer "I prefer not to." So he retreats in a blizzard of legalisms. This "eminently safe " lawyer who tells us he "never addresses a jury" is helplessly trying to do exactly that, and the jury he addresses begins to look suspiciously like himself.

Dan McCall, The Silence of Bartleby (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989): pp. 118-19