Laura Rominger's "Bartleby: A Social View"

In his text, Melville depicts Bartleby almost as a robot on an assembly line. Bartleby is able to do only one task, and when asked to do any other task, he would prefer to be useless. This is the case until he is unable and/or unwilling to work any longer, almost as if his machine- like quality is irreversibly gone. Bartleby is broken and must now sit and collect dust just as out dated or broken machines sit in warehouses until they are given up for scrap. Through Melville's vivid accounts of Bartleby's work, idleness, and ultimate death, it seems that Melville is trying to persuade us that the ideals of the Puritan work ethic, when taken to the extreme, are both ridiculous and pathetic.

The ideals of working or wasting away and dying are both exemplified through Bartleby's life. Melville mocks Bartleby's steadfast adherence to his work, and only his work, through the actions of Bartleby's boss and co-workers. They are continually inconvenienced because Bartleby "prefers not", or refuses, to do anything other than write. When Bartleby is unable and/or unwilling to work, it appears that he has more or less succumbed to the other Puritan ideal of death. This is particularly evident during the later part of the text. Bartleby does absolutely nothing for anyone, especially himself. Even when he is removed from the building and placed in the "Tombs", he does not even make an effort to nourish his body. Melville is also trying to help us to see Bartleby from the inside, out.

Many passages in the text show Bartleby's boss feeling pity for his employee in his emotional and physical existence. When his boss discovers that Bartleby has been living in the office, his feelings of pity heighten and he says "what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed.... his solitude, how horrible!" Additionally, Bartleby's employer states "it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach." This indicates that his employers pity extended beyond Bartleby's person. Further evidence of the employer's deep felt emotion occurs when he visits Bartleby in the "Tombs" and attempts to help Bartleby once again. Little did he know it would be the final time. In other words, Melville is trying to say that strict devotion to only one thing is not good for an individual nor for those around him or her.

The Puritan beliefs which he mocks as well as pities are history he is unable to change, but as for the future, he simply wants to remind us that "variety is the spice of life."

[Bartleby -- Full Text]

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