Analysis of Herman Melville’s Bartleby The Scrivener

After regardless attempt to win the attention of the readership audience, Herman Melville finally made his breakthrough with “Bartleby the Scrivener.”It has received good readership reactions, and the reviews and ratings qualify Bartleby the Scrivener among the best novella to read.

Bartleby with his common response “I would prefer not to” makes every reader mesmerize the book easily, and this has worked for the author to utilize the style of repetition. The plot and settings of the story are based on the Wall Street office where a lawyer becomes the narrator of the whole story.

As the story unfolds, we are introduced to a diligent and focused worker at one of the offices within the Wall Street building. He works for his employer who is a lawyer and Bartleby whose core role was to sort dead letters became reliable and vital to his boss since his input was great.

Isolation Acts a Major Theme

The lawyer who is the employer of Bartleby suggests the first-person narration of his concern about his employee’s situation. He represents his standards as a generous man, and his worry about Bartleby is seen to be practical after he goes even further to pay the turnkey to take good care of him while in prison.

Additionally, out of the desire to control confrontation and push Bartleby out of his business premise, the narrator switched his working apartment. There are instances he persuaded Bartleby to pull up his socks but in vain to respond to him. Therefore, still, he tolerated him to be part of his business until he gave up when he totally became unprofitable to the business. The non-confrontation nature of the narrator is evident when he takes with him extra employees to replace Bartleby (Johnson, 2015, n.p.). Turkey and Nippers were not efficient as compared with Bartleby’s work experience, but he chose them over him to avoid unnecessary confrontations.

The dilemma becomes the greatest challenge narrator finds himself into throughout the story. The choice either to keep it professional to keep the business alive by getting rid of the depressed employee who proves himself to be unproductive, or to be emotionally concerned about his employee’s situation. Finally, the narrator gets detached and applies the move-on step and left Bartleby in Wall Street to be dealt with by the incoming occupants.

Conclusion

The theme of isolation is portrayed throughout the context. The isolation in the American workplace and general life is manifested vividly through Bartleby solitary move to remain silent and only responds by his automatic reply ”I would prefer not to.” From his former job at the Dead Letter Office represent the metaphor style used to represent the isolation of communication Bartleby experienced.

He never ran away from his fate when he joined the lawyer’s office only to be designated into a separate office from his co-workers (Fuller, 2017, n.p.).

References

Johnson, E. (2015). Shmoop Opt-In. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/Wyp4rB

Fuller, F. (2017). Herman Melville’s ”Bartleby, the Scrivener”: Summary & Analysis. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/Wv1jXW