The
Burden of Bartleby
Oftentimes
things aren’t always as they seem. This
certainly rings true in the case of Henry Melville’s Bartleby, the
Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. It
is about struggles with a character named Bartleby, whose ghostly presence in
the story is the result of a breakdown of the narrator’s mind. In fact,
Bartleby does not exist at all as an actual scrivener, but instead represents a
part of the narrator that he wishes to repress in order to become a more
effective and industrious worker.
Being
a more effective and industrious worker is what the narrator struggles with the
entire story. Prior to explaining about
Bartleby, the character whom the story is written, the narrator talks about his
other negligent employees. His two other scriveners together basically only make
up one functioning employee. The
narrator describes their habits as, “I never had to do with their
eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other like guards” (par.
13). One is only a good employee until twelve o’clock, while the second scrivener
is only effective after twelve. Yet he
finds excuse to keep them around. The
two will not leave, and have been with him before Bartleby came along. This proves to be immensely important,
because it shows his need for a new employee due to how ineffective his
previous ones were.
It
then becomes Bartleby’s burden to fill the role of new employee. He is the narrator’s way of making himself become
a better worker, but the plan backfires.
His own mind sabotages him in a way by tricking him into doing way more
work than is needed, when in reality he could have simply gotten competent
workers in the first place. It is just
one of the examples of how the narrator is a not a good problem solver. His very first issue that he mishandled was
keeping his other two scriveners employed.
It would have made his life a ton easier, if he were to simply replace
them with two fully functioning employees.
That would cut his workload way down, and make it so he doesn’t feel the
need to hire another scrivener just to pick up their slack. By not solving that first problem correctly,
he creates yet another problem for himself by “hiring” Bartleby. This eventually proves to make things even
worse for himself, because of how insubordinate of an employee he turns out to
be. He then ends up trying to repress Bartleby,
because he isn’t an effective or industrious worker. Of course, he goes about doing this in all
the wrong ways as well. Even though he expresses his great annoyance of
Bartleby’s ways, he still finds room to reason with, or “help,” him. After he realizes Bartleby cannot be reasoned
with, he tries different angles such as bribing or relocating Bartleby to get
rid of this problem. It should also
cross the narrator’s mind at some point that perhaps Bartleby is suffering from
some kind of mental disorder. In this
case the correct solution to this problem would be to try options such as taking
him to a counselor or doctor. The fact
that he never does any of this is further evidence that Bartleby does not exist
at all. In reality, the narrator self-inflicts a large burden by imagining
Bartleby. The narrator indeed does succeed in making himself be a more
effective and industrious worker by bringing Bartleby around, but at the cost
of making things way harder on himself than is necessary.
It
says a lot that the very first words that the narrator speaks are, “I AM a
rather elderly man” This serves as a bit of a warning or foreshadowing that the
narrator might not be all there mentally.
Although he must have been younger in the story he tells of Bartleby, he
may be not remembering past events quite correctly due to his old age. There are points in the short story where
other characters interact with Bartleby.
Upon first glance, this would make it seem as though Bartleby couldn’t
have been a figment of the narrator’s imagination. Due to his elderly age, however, his
recollection is likely less than perfect. It would make sense that these interactions
could have just been conjured up later on in order to further the believability
of Bartleby’s existence. If there were
no interactions between Bartleby and anyone other than the narrator, then it
would be much more obvious that Bartleby is imaginary. This would prove to be a less powerful motivator
for the narrator to be more industrious, so it makes sense that he would want
to build Bartleby up to be as real as possible.
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