Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville - ★★★★
AUTHOR: Herman Melville
GENRE: Classic Short Story
RATING: 4 stars.
In a Nutshell: A classic novella combining comedy and tragedy in a memorable way. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea as the themes are quite subtle. I am still not sure if I got them all. But I liked it enough, and that’s what counts. J
Story Synopsis:
The unnamed first-person narrator is an elderly gentleman who owns a law firm on Wall Street. He has two scriveners (scribe/clerk) working for him, along with an office boy. However, when the work gets hectic, he decides to hire another scrivener.
Enter Bartleby – a pallid young man who does his copy work most meticulously. But he has a “flaw’. Whenever he is asked to do anything outside of his core duty, he replies, ‘I prefer not to.” The narrator is in turn flummoxed and frustrated and furious, but as Bartleby does his copy work well, he is still retained in employment. As time passes by, Bartleby’s “preferences” become even more restrictive. How will the owner tackle such dogmatic yet polite refusals to work?
This story was first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in Melville’s ‘The Piazza Tales’ in 1856. It received critical disdain on publication, to the dismay of Melville who was already struggling with the negative reception to his ‘Moby Dick’ published just before this story. Soon after this story collection, Melville gave up publishing fiction. It is much later that both works were considered modern classics.
This story worked for me on multiple aspects:
👌The pacing: For a mid-19th century novella (this is somewhere around 60 pages long), the writing is surprisingly smooth and quick. There are descriptions but not so extensive as to bog down the pacing. It is probably one of the fastest novellas I have read from this period. (Not to be compared to modern works, of course.)
👌The characters: Within the limited page space, Melville develops a clear character profile of the narrator and the other employees, except for Bartleby, who remains an enigma.
The titular Bartleby is obviously the focus of the tale. With his reclusive attitude and his quirky responses, he makes for a compelling main character. But the story’s narrator left me intrigued more than Bartleby did. As a business owner, he would have been entirely justified in scolding or even firing his employee – no one would have questioned him if he became aggressive with such a person who refused to work as per his job profile. However, the narrator seems more sympathetic than antagonistic towards his charge, and tries every method of coaxing before finally resorting to severe measures.
I wonder how such a situation would pan out in 2024, where most firms have no regard for individual employees, and most employees too work more out of duty than passion. This would have been a Human Resources nightmare.
👌The writing approach: The story balances comic and tragic elements fairly well, though the tragic component becomes too much towards the end. Melville doesn’t provide any explanation for why Bartleby did what he did. It could be that he was simply an eccentric, or it might be that he was struggling with some extreme form of depression and just didn’t know how to handle it. Whatever the reason, Melville doesn’t aid us with hints, and we are left to use our own imagination to interpret the whys while reading the whats.
👌The themes: This is where it gets a bit tricky for me. What exactly is this story trying to convey? Corporate servitude and the right to say ‘no’ to assigned work? The difference between free will and determination while handling one’s job? Where to draw a line between being a boss and being a concerned human? How far can one go towards self-sabotage while in throes of some emotional chaos? How to realise when to seek help if the problems of life seem unsurmountable? How to behave with someone who refuses to respond even to friendly overtures? All of these apply to the tale to some extent or the other, though I can’t figure out Melville’s intent behind this work. But the fact is – each of these points is as (or probably even more) relevant today as it might have been in the 1850s.
All in all, this ended up as an interesting story with memorable characters and an unusual plot. Though the ending caught me unawares, I still enjoyed most of the journey. Definitely recommended for classic story lovers, as long as you don’t mind the lack of closure.
As this story is in the public domain, you can read it free of cost on various sites online. I read it from the below link:
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