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The Dead Letters
At the end of “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the Lawyer reveals the one clue that he has found to Bartleby's history: a rumor that Bartleby once worked in the Dead Letter Office. The Lawyer believes this is the cause of Bartleby's strange behavior: “Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?” The Lawyer's theory is that reading all of those dead letters, intended for people who are dead or gone, must have been so depressing that it slowly drove Bartleby to his apathetic and emotionally detached state.
The dead letters could symbolize many things. Some critics who look at “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a comment on Melville's life believe the “dead letters” may represent his unpopular novels, such as Moby-Dick. These novels, like the letters, may be “errands of life,” offering the reader great insight into their life, but the novels, like the letters, have no one to read them. The letters could also serve as a metaphor for the drudgery of the emerging middle-class, blue-collar job. Sorting letters day in and day out could eventually be difficult for anyone to endure for a long time, and such repetitive tasks are, even today, a common source of depression for some employees. By making them dead letters, Melville makes the depressing nature of such a task more explicit. When he changes jobs, Bartleby is willing to write letters (or copies) for some time, but when he is asked to read them, he would “prefer not to.” For a short time, he finds some satisfaction in the creation (rather than the destruction) of letters, but finally he is unable to do even that.
Walls
Walls are mentioned repeatedly throughout “Bartleby the Scrivener.” To begin with, the entire story is set on Wall Street and the full title of the short story is “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall Street.” The text also contains multiple descriptions of actual walls including the white wall of the sky-light shaft which is located on one end of the Lawyer’s office, the brick wall that the Lawyer can see out of his window, the sliding glass partition that separates the Lawyer’s office from the scriveners’ office, the folding screen that the Lawyer sets up around Bartleby’s desk, and, eventually, the prison walls that enclose around Bartleby after he is arrested at the end of the text.
At first glance, “Bartleby the Scrivener”’s various walls can seem like arbitrary details that allow the reader to better visualize the text’s key settings. However, a deeper reading of the text reveals that these walls have an important symbolic purpose. Walls are, first and foremost, a means to divide a space so that things can be kept separate. Within the context of “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the various walls keep the different characters in separate spaces which discourages intermingling. This symbolizes the inherent disconnection and isolation that all of the characters, but especially Bartleby, experience throughout their daily lives.
