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The demands of capitalism can create a toxic work environment.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” is a complicated text that has inspired a countless number of different readings and interpretations over the years. One popular interpretation of the text is that it is a critique of capitalism. This reading is partially attributed to the story’s setting. “Bartleby the Scrivener” is set on Wall Street in the mid-1850s. This setting is a crucial component to the text because Wall Street saw a massive growth in the mid-nineteenth century as American society placed an increasing emphasis on capital, industry, finance, and technology. This development did wonders for the economy but it also fundamentally altered the way offices and business were run. This is certainly the case for the fictional Lawyer who narrates the text because he needs to hire Bartleby in the first place because the increased workload has exceeded the scope of Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. Furthermore, Melville does not paint the Lawyer’s practice in a particularly flattering light. The employees are volatile and display varying degrees of productivity, the boss sequesters himself away from his staff, and it appears that nobody in the office can communicate effectively with each other. However, at no point in the text does anybody make a genuine effort to solve any of these issues. Instead, they simply focus on the demands of Wall Street instead of trying to work through any structural problems. As a result, “Bartleby the Scrivener” comments on the toxic work environment created by the impossible demands of capitalism.
There is death in life and life in death.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” is a tale of capitalism and office life but it is also a story about death. References to death and mortality loom in the background for the duration of the text. For instance, Bartleby is repeatedly compared to a ghost or a phantom. The text also famously ends with Bartleby’s death in the prison and the discovery that he used to work for the Dead Letters Office. However, the text’s emphasis on death goes beyond the literal. Instead, “Bartleby the Scrivener” explores the liminal quality of death. All of the characters in the story seem to experience a sort of death in life. The Lawyer and his employees go through the motions of being alive but the text repeatedly emphasizes both their deadening routines and their office space, which encloses the workers like a tomb. These characters are living dull, blank lives and the act of living is merely a rehearsal for death. On the other hand, Melville argues that there is also life in death. Bartleby was already dead by the time the Lawyer decided to record his story. However, Bartleby’s memory continues to live on after his death because he is immortalized in both the Lawyer’s memory and in the story that he tells.
Storytelling is subjective.
Bartleby is the text’s titular character and the story is, first and foremost, about him. However, Bartleby is not the narrator of the text. Instead, Bartleby’s story is told from the perspective of his old boss—a lawyer who hired Bartleby to work as a scrivener in his Wall Street office. The text is told in first person narration and offers an overview of Bartleby’s time as a clerk as well as his ultimate demise. As the story progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that the reader’s understanding of Bartleby is limited to what our narrator understands of Bartleby—which is very little. As a result, the reader never learns who Bartleby is or what drove him to act the way that he did. On the other hand, the reader does not get a great sense of who our narrator is either because he goes to considerable lengths to keep himself at arms length from the reader as he tells Bartleby’s story. The reader does not even learn the narrator’s name—he only introduces himself as a “rather elderly man” and a lawyer. The narrator is in complete control of the narrative and the reader is only given the information that he possesses and that he wants the reader to hear. As a result, Melville’s use of point of view and first person narration forces the reader to contemplate the subjective nature of storytelling.
