In Bartleby, the
Scrivener, one can take notice of several important themes present in the
short story. One of them is the social tension represented in the lawyer's
office that would seem to be a prison for all the characters depriving them of
any freedom, or it could also be bringing to light the lawyer’s different
behavior towards each character.. An example of it is the distribution of each
employee in the office. Notice how each one is separated according to the
lawyer's convenience. The same happens with the fact that each character has a
nickname instead of a proper name: “In truth they were nicknames, (...) deemed
expressive of their persons or characters.” (Page 2404)”, however one must
think, do the nicknames actually match them? And the answer to that is, no they
do not. Looking at Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut as individuals, one concludes
that the three characters have different personality traits, though the lawyer
insists on merely mentioning physical and psychological. With this stance, the
lawyer strikes us as an arrogant rich man from a higher social class turning
these three characters, from the middle class, into “just another nameless
worker[1]”.
The facts are that Turkey was an:” (…) Englishman of about my [the lawyer’s]
age” (Page 2404), Nippers was: “acting as a lawyer for the poor” (Page 2405,
footnote number 7) and Ginger Nut had in fact been: “sent to [the lawyer’s]
office as student at law” (Page 2406). Therefore, since the beginning of the
short story one can point out numerous times when the lawyer puts himself in a
pedestal to make himself feel great. For instance, when he discovers that
Bartleby, most likely, is poor he refers the fact that: “His poverty is great”
(Page 2413), and in other times the lawyer believes he can buy anything with
money:” Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval” (Page
2410).
However, Bartleby is the exception, since he appears to
be from a lower social class. The lawyer calls him by his name, perhaps
out of pity, in fact, he is the only character whose name we are given, even
so Bartleby is also confined to a convenient space chosen by the
lawyer: “I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, (...), so
as to have this quiet man within easy call” (page 2407). Even so, throughout
the short story, Bartleby appear to be the character with more freedom.
Another
example of criticism is the fact that Bartleby is constantly refusing to do any
job related to proofreading, since “A autenticidade não pode ser copiada”[2], but at the end he also refuses to copy
anything at all:” I have given up copying”( page 2417), and also mentions that ” (...) [he] like[s]
to be stationary. But [he is] not particular.” (Page 2424). Despite his
unwillingness, each time Bartleby refuses to do his job as a copyist he ends up
making others do his job, which in a way shows that even though the situation
is unjust, the lawyer does not do a thing about it. While Bartleby says
“stationary,” it is important to understand that the author was making an
association with the mass printing that was done in those places, and at the
same time this is a little ironic because Bartleby didn’t particularly like to
copy but he also didn’t want to be treat as piece of paper/ document While at
the beginning he was copying he quickly becomes unable to do so and refers the
fact that his eyes had gone bad. With this he is trying to give himself an
excuse not to copy anymore. If that was not enough, he also points out the fact
that he finds any other job too confined: “Would you like a clerkship in a
dry-goods store? There is too much confinement about that. No I would not like
a clerkship; but I am not particular” (Page 2424). Still in this matter, there
is another aspect to address and that is the fact that, once again, when
Bartleby says he’s not particular, he wants to say that he is not particular in
the sense of not being excluded from the rest of society.
Bringing back
the illustrious words of preferring not to do something, one must explain
another important aspect underlying this constant answer, and that is the lack
of mutual understanding between Bartleby and the lawyer. One example of this is
the fact that he himself does not know the first thing about his employee,
other than his name, which is surprising, given the thought that he gave
nicknames to all the others.
One last
aspect to take into account would be the fact that Bartleby could be the
representation of Melville’s frustration as a writer, while “Try[ing] to get a
living by the Truth” which proved to be a difficult obstacle in his life, one
he could not overcome. So, if we think about Bartleby with this idea in mind,
it becomes easy to associate Bartleby’s behavior of not conforming to his
situation as Melville’s own voice, while he struggled as writer. If that is so,
then each time we read:” I would prefer not to” one can also interpret the
lawyer as Melville’s readers pressuring him to write what they wanted to read.
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