Interpretation of “Bartleby”2012 English Class, 1204402019, Crush Abstract Herman Melville‟s tale “Bartleby”is one of those highly acclaimed symbolic short stories in the 19th century. Bartleby is an exploited worker in the capitalistic prison—Wall Street. To some critics, he is “a Thoreau-like practitioner of passive resistance”or “an autobiographical projection of Melville as alienated author.”1In this article, I am going to concentrate on the dark, ruthless commercial society and its defective capitalist values the narrator wants to reveal in “Bartleby”; specifically, I will illustrate how the narrator‟s failure to understand the existence of Bartleby and to help him indicates the limitations of rationalism. Further more, I will also try to explain what does Bartleby really need, and how can people really save him from terrible forlornness.Key words Bartleby society limitation rationalism capitalist valuesMelville‟s “Bartleby”is narrated by the first-person narrator, as he describes himself, is “a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best…one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men‟s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds.” He is quite satisfied with his profitable life. He is proud of himself in his successful business and proudly attached that he was once employed and praised by John Jacob Astor: “All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next method.”The narrator is a typical business man of Wall Street—the epitome of the increasing urbanized, capital-driven society.The author does not set Wall Street as the backdrop randomly, but uses it1(journal articles) Y on-jae Jung, “The Poe-esque Elements in Melville‟s…Bartleby the Scrivener‟”, Foreign Literature Studies 4 (2009), p. 63.technically. The word “wall”in Wall Street has its intended symbolic meaning, namely, the ideological barrier which thwarts communication and alienates people from each other not only in body, but also in soul. Meanwhile, the description of the “walls” appears in this story for many times. As Marx Leo2has pointed out, “wall” in “Bartleby” is a kind of image. The recurrent image of the “wall” serves as an epitome to satirize the dark side of the capital-driven society. The first time is to depict about his chambers: “At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom…the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern”. They are really living in the “concrete forests”. Imagine that when they look up out of their windows, they can see only “an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade” and what dull and suffocating environment they are living in day by day. Are they not like the “prisoners”in those little concrete cells? But the narrator doesn‟t realize it and even tries to create more “walls” between himself and his employees: “ground glass folding doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself”; “Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green very small screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice.”The narrator separates himself from his employees by screen and limits their activities to dull copying and he merely wants them to serve as gofers without any acknowledgment of their liberty. The shrewd reconstructing of this office, just as Y on-jae Jung points out: “creates an atmosphere of separation and division, and contribute to establishing the office as a typical hierarchically structured Wall Street business enterprise”.3From the narrator‟s arrangement of his office, we could reach a conclusion that he to some degree regards his employees as mere tools of making profit. And this point can be further demonstrated in his opinions and attitudes towards his scriveners. We know that he has two persons as copyists, called Turkey and Nippers, both of2（journal articles）Marx Leo, “Mervilleps Parable of the Walls” , Sewanee Review 61 (1953), 602 -27.3Y on-jae Jung, 2009, p. 67.whom bore some unbearable queer habits or characters. But considering about their “values”he didn‟t drive them away. He was willing to overlook Turkey‟s eccentricities after twelve o‟clock because the old copyist was “in many ways a most valuable person” during his period of productivity: “all the time before twelve o‟clock, meridian, he was the quickest, steadiest creature, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be matched”. Like Turkey, Nippers was also regarded by the narrator “a very useful man”who “wrote a neat swift hand”and also “was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment” and “always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way”which “reflected credit upon” the narrator‟s business. And when he had fully noticed Bartle‟s weird behaviors and began to reconsider about this man, he told himself that “He is useful to me”and “to befriend Bartleby…will cost me little or nothing”. He at first considered Bartleby as “a valuable acquisition” because of “his steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry”. In my opinion, these judgments made towards his clerks reflect his pragmatism and the typical capitalist values—there is only eternal interest relationship between people. To a certain extent, he judges people merely by the potential values they could bring about. As Wilson James C. has put out, the lawyer‟s repeated use of the word “value”, “use”and “cos t”indicates that in the lawyer‟s perspective“everything becomes a matter of profit and loss”4Although he claimed that he had been struck by Bartleby‟s melancholy, which made him gloomed that both himself and Bartleby were “sons of Adam”, and he had recalled the divine injunction in The Bible: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another”, but as far as I am concerned, the narrator is a little bit hypocritical. Under the clothes of the principle of sweet charity, he tried to act up to moral and religious doctrine: “there is no vulgar bulling, no bravado of any sort…nothing of that kind.” Nevertheless, his all sorts of lofty and gracious behaviors were a kind of investment: he just wanted to feel relieved about himself conscientiously and, as he confessed himself, to “cheaply purchase a delicious4(journal articles)Wilson James C., “Bartleby: The Walls of Wall Street”, Arizona Quarterly 37 (W inter 1981), p. 335.self-approval”. In spite of his kind-hearted intentions towards Bartleby at first, he finally decided to get rid of him and the direct reason was his worry that keeping him as a strange creature will scandalize his professional reputation. He may not be a man of vanity, but is absolutely keen on face-saving. Also from those lawyers and witnesses and businessmen who whisper and wonder about Bartle in the office—their indifferent features, we can easily get a glimpse of how the dark society has influenced people who live in it and reduced them to such ruthless men.“Bartleby”not only objects to the hypocrisy and utilitarianism of the capitalist religion, but also profoundly reveals the limitations of rationalism. In the opposite relation between rationality and irrationality, the two terms seem to be equal at the ends of the scale. However, in the operation of the specific social ideology, the former is endowed with affirmative significance, while the latter is in most cases spurned.Specifically, to Bartleby, accepting money and the admonition, doing as he was commanded, is considered to be rational. Otherwise, his resistance to work is a sign of being irrational. When the narrator asked Bartleby to help him examine a paper and got the reply “I prefer not to” for the first time, his instant thought was that his ear had deceived him or Bartleby had misunderstood his meaning, for he couldn‟t believe that he should say so. And he began to reason with him, trying to persuade him by putting out his set of rational rules. He said, “These are your own copies…Every copyist is bound to help examine his own copy.”There is no doubt that the narrator was living in a grid-shaped world made up of standard norms. He tried to attribute every unreadable thing to reasonable factors. For example, he sorted another two scriveners into different classes: Turkey was idle, noisy and reckless after twelve o‟clock probably because he had drunk in the noon; and Nippers was irritable and insolent in the morning inasmuch he had indigestion. As to Bartleby, the narrator expected that his behavior, like Turkey‟s and Nippers‟, also have some regular patterns to follow: the agony in soul might be explained by the disease in body; the complex symptom in the subjective spiritual world might be simplified through the appearance of the objective material universe. Old lawyerfound a variety of reasons: the dull and tiresome work, the physical disease or the visual loss resulted from the dim light, and so on, to explain the anomalous behavior of Bartleby. However, in this case—when he was “browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way”, he began to “stagger in his own plainest faith” and surmise that “wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side.”Rationality has its fatal limitations. It is sometimes even against humanity. Bartleby was “one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable”. In other words, his independence from the society can‟t be interpreted by rational reasons. It was love, care and humanity that the society really needed if it was to understand and save Bartleby. However, this society was estimated according to truth and false, rationality and irrationality. The promotion of the former and the suppression of the latter leaded to the inevitability of Bartleby‟s death. He‟s fate was doomed to be grinded by the wheel of rationality.Bartleby died because the narrator let him die. The narrator bribed the grub-man to take care of him and offer the best food for him. Bartleby, as might be expected, preferred “not to dine”at that time and wanted nothing to do with the narrator. As William Slaughter5put out: “Bartle was starving, but not for money. For love.”What Bartleby really needed is love. However, the narrator failed to do what he had power to do. But the narrator might not have realized that he had such power until his death. Actually there are several conspicuous hints in Bartleby‟s words which told people that he was longing for love and friendship from common humanity. At the period just preceding Bartleby‟s sent into the Tombs, when the narrator asked him would him like to do some other jobs and make a change to his current life, I believer not only me, but all readers must be surprised that Bartleby spoke more words than before:“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.192“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.1935 (journal articles) William Slaughter, “Bartleby and The Anclent Mariner: Parallel Texts”, Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages 1 (1989), p. 2.I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us.194“Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of great tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed from the office?”195No answer. 196“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do som ething, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?”197“No; I would prefer not to make any change.”198“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods sto re?”199“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.”200“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!”201“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once.202“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.”203“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.”204His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. 205“Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.”206“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”207“How then woul d going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?”208“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.”209It seems that the narrator‟s tolerance and mild attitudes towards him had some good effects on this poor creature; Bartleby was more willing to reveal his thoughts. But he might be stricken and hurt too seriously in his past job as a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office; he was afraid of adventures and changing and preferred a stationary life. Some people may be doubtful that his word “but I am not particular” is totally contradictory to his unwillingness to do this, to do that or to do anything e lse but staying unchanged—he was not unparticular at all, but rather was too particular. However, in my opinion, such behavior was his silent declaration that he needed nothing but love. He was not particular about his job, but he was afraid that there was no humanity in his job. If the narrator continued to help him in his solitary life and offered love and care in his freezing soul, there was great possibility that the ice made by despair would melt away some day. At least he was willing to speak more words now—wa sn‟t it a hint that there was more hope dwelling within him?As the narrator said about Bartleby, he was “billed upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like to fathom”. That mysterious purpose was to teach the narrator to love. But the narrator had not yet grasped it. He had not really comprehended that he and Bartleby are both “sons of Adam” and share “the bond of a common humanity”Impotence about Bartleby‟s misfortune as he was, the old lawyer was restless in his heart for the conscience stirs. That is why the narrator wrote down Bartleby‟s story. Since he had failed to redeem himself via helping the poor creature thoroughly when he was alive, he hoped that he could be redeemed by making sense of him after his death.All told, the narrator, as a representative middleclass immersed in such a relentless capitalist society, was incontinently influenced by bourgeois ideology. While we probably do not condone his bad behavior towards Bartleby, at least we might understand it. Actually, the depiction of the little depressive story happened in the little law office is also the poignant portrait of the 19th century capitalist society. Melville is not simply against the commercialization, but rather is criticizing the impersonality of the business society that rules America.。