Hi,folks, here's the prompt:
Describe Bartleby as a conversion of the narrator. How does Bartleby convert the narrator into deeper insights?
I'm taking a short story class,
Thanks for helping
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Professor xxx
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3 October 2012
The Transformation of the Lawyer
Doubling in "Bartleby the Scrivener"
In Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," doubling is an identical replica. In Herman Melville's novel "Bartleby the Scrivener," doubling is a mirror image--a conversion. While Nippers and Turkey are doubles of each other, there is also a parallel between Bartleby and the narrator. Turkey, just like his name, is florid in the morning but too vigorous after meridian; Niggers is uneasy in the morning but productive in the afternoon. Due to these people providing comical feature and a balance in the novel, readers can get a deeper sense of another part of the story happening on the Wall Street. Bartleby, the phantom double of the narrator, is introduced into the story as a "pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, [and] inscrutably forlorn" young man who is standing upon office threshold motionlessly (1090). As the plot progressively going to climax, the narrator gradually develops deeper insights about Bartleby, society and humanity. How does Bartleby change him?
The narrator, at the beginning of the story, is an "eminently safe man", who highly values the peace in his life (1086). He permits the old Turkey to continue working for him even Turkey should abridge his working, when Turkey appeals lawyer's "fellow-feeling" (1088). He is also a lawyer dealing with rich men's legal documents and he maintains that "the easiest way of life is the best" (1086). All of the descriptions at the beginning of the fiction only reiterate the lawyer's nature--reconciliation. When Bartleby joins him, he is very glad to have a copyist who meets the qualification and devotes all the time to writing.
Although Bartleby aggravates the narrator many times, the narrator, for the most part, reconciles with Bartleby, believing they are both "sons of Adam" (1097). The lawyer is touched by the scrivener's industry. At first, Bartleby does a huge amount of writing ceaselessly, but he writes "silently, palely, [and] mechanically" (1901). Even when he rejects the narrator, his eyes are rather calm; "not a wrinkle of agitation ripples him" (1901). This sedateness stimulates the lawyer's curiosity. Because the narrator cannot find any normal behavior from his clerk when they are in the same room, the narrator is fascinated by an unknown force, which makes him to tolerate the clerk. The office, described as shrouded in the atmosphere of distressing, is deficient in vitality. While Bartleby is standing before the lofty brick wall, lost in his reveries, the narrator feels the melancholy hanging over the office and shocked by his steadiness. Like a ghost, "agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he happened at the entrance of his hermitage" (1903). We can consider these signs of Bartleby as a phantom conversion of the lawyer. Since lawyer is seized by the scrivener's overpowering melancholy, he sees the scrivener as a part of himself. So, he befriends Bartleby and thinks Bartleby as a poor fellow.
Beyond a certain point, "melancholy merge into fear, [and] pity into repulsion" (1098). After the narrator finds out Bartleby lives in the building, he becomes full of terrible uneasiness. Like a ghost, Bartleby lives in the office, and has experienced the vanity of the Wall Street every day and night. "What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed" (1097). At this point, the narrator cannot tolerate Bartleby's morbid depression anymore and defends that his transformation is not due to selfishness. Because there is a parallel between the lawyer and his psychological double--the scrivener, as the narrator says to himself, "it is his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach" (1098). Moreover, after all attempts to bring Bartleby home from his "dead-wall reveries" in order to avoid confrontation fail, the narrator is occupied by the "old Adam of resentment," and he fails Bartleby at last (1098; 1104).
The death imagery extends the conversion: Bartleby is a double for both the narrator and the humanity. Due to the change in administration of the Dead Letter Office, Bartleby lost his job; the narrator also lost his job for a sudden abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery. But Bartleby fails to adapt to the change and turns to renounce every piece of his life. As Jonathan Edwards states, "Free will require the will to be isolated from the moment of decision," Bartleby chooses to free himself by secluding himself in reality (Emery 170-187). He comes from the place where "on errands of life, these letters speed to death," so he is depressed in nature (1111). When put into capitalist society, Bartleby has realized the estrangement between people and the mortality of human. Having seen through the society, Bartleby replies to narrator "I know where I am" in the "Tombs" (1107; 1108). As a double for humanity, Bartleby chooses the death, a symbol for the emptiness of capitalist society. The narrator and everyone else, in Bartleby's point of view, are caged in the world full of sorrow and mortality, while the narrator thrives in the capitalism. At the end of the story, the narrator understands Bartleby; he understands all human endeavors are often futile. Therefore, he sighs: "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity" (1111)!
"As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful." says psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas. At length, the narrator, progressively affected by the distressed clerk, has realized the mortality and the incapability of human in modern society.
Work Cited
Bollas, Christopher. "Pushing Paper." Lapham's Quarterly N.p. 2011 n. pag. Web. 30 Sept. 2012
Emery, Allan Moore. The alternatives of Melville's "Bartleby." University of California Press, 1976. Print.
Melville, Herman. "Bartleby the Scrivener." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Bausch Richard, and Cassill R.V. NewYork: Norton, 2005. 1085-1111. Print.
