"Bartleby": A Prediction of Tragic Down Fall Due to Industrialization

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" by Herman Melville depicts characters whose personalities reflect the evolving world of industrialization. “Bartleby” deals with several characters whose attitudes at work, suggest more about the environment than is explicitly told throughout the story. The subtitle, “A Story of Wall-Street,” of Melville’s story suggests one of two things: it is coincidental, or Melville believed there were issues big enough to write about in the economic and social aspects of the industrial revolution.  At the very beginning of the story we meet the lawyer-narrator who insists on telling the story of Bartleby, “who[m] was a scrivener the strangest [he] ever saw or heard of” (Melville 18). Melville is suggesting that strange things are happening to both the economic and social environment. People like Bartleby are becoming static beings due to uninteresting daily routines at the law office. In fact, Bartleby refuses to do his job as the days go by. Bartleby’s answer to any work suggestions made to him was, “I would prefer not to.” With the progression of the industrial world outside the law office, there was a great demand for copyists and/or scriveners to rewrite the words of another being, over and over. Bartleby, along with many others during this era, became tired of the repetition day-in and day-out.

Moreover, the narrator was an unreliable narrator, by which Melville suggests that people of higher class are unable to relate to people of lower class. Before the narrator begins to tell the story of Bartleby he says, “it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings” because this information plays a crucial role in understanding the story (Melville 18). The narrator’s first priority is to provide the reader with his background in order to prove his place in the social and economic aspects of society. The narrator is blinded by his role in society to the point that he is unable to connect and understand the underlying cause of Bartleby’s refusal to participate in the work environment. Moreover, the lawyer accounts his profession to be “a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace” (Melville 18). Which proves his inability to connect to any awful event that may have occurred to Bartleby; which in fact, asserts his distance from the “working class.” His elevation in society, distances him from the low and rustic people whose lives have been affected by the industrial world.

Bartleby’s ways become problematic for the narrator. The lawyer states, “The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me” (Melville 28). Bartleby’s passiveness was not the only issue; it's his ambiguity that also causes the lawyer to become irritated with him. Although Bartleby flusters him, he never takes the initiative to ask what bothers Bartleby. The narrator says, “Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush… it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here” (Melville 31). The lawyer and Bartleby’s actions represent the evolution of office jobs: they consume a beings time and energy and disregards their social lives. Bartleby’s ways signify the overwhelming changes during the industrial revolution. People without high quality skills or an education, had little or no hope in becoming more than the business world labeled them as.

“Bartleby” predicted a catastrophic downfall of people and towns due to the devastating focus on the industrial world. Of course, this would have only happened if things had remained the same.

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby." Great American Short Stories. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002. 18-48. Print.

-Lily