Bartleby draft

Phill Bradford

2/26/2012

English 102

Death by Lack of Work

In “Bartleby the Scrivner: A Story of Wall Street”, by Herman Melville, the focus of the story is a man who's job it is to copy materials for a lawyer. What makes him worthy of a story is his apathetic view towards his work, and seemingly every aspect of his life. Bartleby and the old lawyer he works for represent two opposing views towards work. The country was changes and the ethics, including work ethic, were changing with it. The narrator, his boss, represents the Protestant work ethic while Bartleby represents a new ethic of leisure time. Melville saw this lack of work ethic as harmful towards society.

The piece is narrated by a lawyer who has his own firm and I think represents the capitalist view of the time the piece was written. Under his employ is two Scrivners, an elderly man by the name of Turkey, an elderly man who is no stranger to the pulling of a cork. Nippers, another scrivener, who is irritability was as much of a problem as Turkey's alcoholism. Lastly is Ginger Nut an errand boy who's name was gained from the snack he frequently brought the staff at the lawyers office. When business begins to pick up for the narrator he brings on the last scrivener and the major player in Melville's story, Bartleby, who at first is a great employee and who's addition represents that capitalist expansion of the time on Wall Street.

After a time Bartleby's productivity begins to decline. This starts when the narrator brings him some extra work to do. Bartleby responds very firmly with “I would prefer not to” which is so passive the lawyer is unsure of how to react. Eventually he discovers Bartleby is living in the office and he attempts to reach out to the struggling scrivener in the form of a raise and edible incentive's. The old lawyer also tried to reason with him to do his work. This type of charity was a common ethic but directly clashes with the work ethic capitalism values. The lawyer is so stunned by how passive Bartleby is that he does not force him to take responsibility. Bartleby's laziness also comes on slowly, first he refuses the extra work and finally he refuses to perform the basic copying he was hired to do. The narrator does not get angry with him the way a typical boss would. Instead he continues to give incentives to do the work he was hired to do. Capitalism values money in exchange for work but Bartleby was not performing any work.

In the end, this was the downfall of the narrator, he went against the tenants of capitalism by giving Bartleby incentives for doing nothing. The narrator never made Bartleby take responsibility for his actions while at the same time the narrator takes no responsibility for Bartleby's inaction. The narrator, as a result, is forced to move his business off of Wall Street in order to get rid of the responsibility of caring for Bartleby. It is the narrators inaction in the situations he is posed with that goes against the tenants of a hard working post industrial revolution society, of almost enabling the lackadaisical behavior if not rewarding it as opposed to just cutting the fat, it is important to note that in this case it isn't just Bartleby who doesn't pull his weight but the other scriveners who become useless around the middle of day. So while the narrator is a cog in the capitalist machine he is a very weak one, with his inability to make those executive decisions.

It was Bartleby who at first was a poster child for this capitalist frame of mind, a seemingly unstoppable hard worker, at the lawyers office he worked around the clock and produced more than the other scriveners. He also had a previous job in which he was a hard worker and dedicated employee. Bartleby left that job and found a new, more enjoyable, job at the lawyer's office. This reflects the capitalist value of freedom of choice and that so long as someone is a hard worker they will eventually be rewarded.

However, eventually Bartleby has a shift in attitude that marks the beginning of the decline for Bartleby, as he did less he lost more even despite the lawyers feeble attempts to “help” him. The more the scrivener refuses to work the more he loses, so it is easy to draw the parallel that the author is of the belief that the less you contribute the less you will get, that “you get what you give” mentality. Bartleby eventually has no home and lives at the law office. The old lawyer confronts Bartleby about this living arrangement but chooses to ignore it, out of charity. Bartleby has not earned this charity though and so he does not learn to “pull himself up by the bootstraps” as the old expression goes. Instead he continues to rely on the charity of the narrator.

This reliance on others eventually lands Bartleby in jail because he refuses to move out of the old lawyer's former office. He lives at the banister outside of the office and is arrested for being a vagrant. The old lawyer attempts to help Bartleby offering him a place to live and, after he is arrested, paying to have Bartleby taken care of in jail.

Bartleby refuses this care and instead starves to death in jail. Melville here is showing what could happen to society if the work ethic of society is changed in the way he saw it changing. He could see that people were beginning to rely on others to do their own work, becoming more interested in consuming things than in working.

Bartleby represents this shift in work ethic. He starts the story as a hard worker in an expanding business and ends the story as a poor homeless man who starves in jail because he would rather not work. As he repeatedly states he “would prefer not to” towards more and more activities. He would rather not do the extra work, the copying, and finally he is too lazy to even eat.

He relied on the charity of the old lawyer so much so that he was unable to care for himself. It was as if the changing society allowed him to be lazy. This is because Melville saw society as changing to become lazier. The death of Bartleby represents the death of society if it continued on the course Melville saw it was on.

The old lawyer while still a hard worker was stunned by these changing values and, as a result, did not know how to react to Bartleby. Capitalism, while allowing for failure, still makes room for charity but only to those that deserve it. If Bartleby and the narrator would have taken responsibility and corrected their actions Bartleby would have live and the old lawyer would not have had to move.

Melville's Bartleby represents how he saw a changing society. He showed what he believed would happen if the work ethic of capitalism was ignored. The old lawyer represents the old values of hard work and determination.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivner: A Story of Wall Street. 12. February. 2012. bartleby.com