Bartleby, the Scrivener Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan for Bartleby
You Need 3 Lessons
Lesson One: American Success Myth, Impovershment Through Substitution, The Hunger for More by Laurence Shames; Pascal's Quote; background information of the story
Lessons Two and Three will be from dividing the questions below:
Questions
Major Themes:
- We reveal more truth about ourselves when we lie than when we’re honest.
- We can not measure morality or love toward others; it must be boundless. The fallacy of moral minimalism.
- For every façade we try to convey to others, we cultivate its opposite, which will sooner or later come out and bite us: McMahon and the cool factor with the Caveman Scream.
- Even smart, morally decent people are capable of boundless self-delusions.
- When we can’t let go of our highly-regimented routines, they become prisons and eventually coffins inside of which we begin our slow death rot.
- We can believe our lives are full of purpose and conviction but in fact we’re just really good actors who’ve fooled not only others but ourselves.
- Analyze the "Safe" archetype.
- You can be a mindless consumer, a safe worker who lives by routine and facade, not conviction; or a noble slacker.
- Story reads as a dream of a man seeing his reflection: a depressed ghost of his former self.
- The narrator is a slave to the illusion of control; in fact, he is controlled by his need to control.
- Food becomes a substitute for human intimacy. Indeed, the narrator is more lonely than he can fathom and his hunger for intimacy and friendship is expressed in a needy obsession with food. The critic Dillingham also says his hunger for food is a hunger for self-approval.
One: What type of image or façade is the narrator eager to convey to the reader? See first paragraph: He’s full of braggadocio and bluster. He’ a man of control, wisdom, and experience.
See 21, the real subject of the story is himself.
See 21, a man of conviction
See 22 top, “unambitious” when in fact he loves image and success.
See 22, name-dropper
See 22 is a “safe” man means he’s afraid of risks and lives in a cocoon
See 22 “I seldom lose my temper” is a rationalization for being a coward
See 24 “I was willing to overlook Turkey’s eccentricities” means he’s cowardly to enforce discipline and high work standards. He can’t fire anyone. He’s also afraid of change.
See 30 “With any other man . . .” The narrator is too scared to assert any real authority because he has no conviction.
See 30, Having no conviction, the narrator looks for approval from other employees.
See 32 and 33 and 40 He explains compassion keeps him from firing Bartleby but it’s really curiosity; he wants to know himself.
See 38, Trinity Church is a ruse, a show of piety
See 45 His commandment to love his brother from the Bible is shallow because he betrays Bartleby when he realizes he is a detriment to his image before his clients.
See 46, 47, the threat to his image compels narrator to take more aggressive actions. “Something severe must be done.” He decides to change offices.
See 48, the narrator’s denial of Bartleby three times is suggestive of the way Peter denied Christ three times.
Two: What evidence is there that Bartleby is in fact the narrator’s alter ego or mirror image? The homunculus within.
See page 28, “I prefer not to,” is the narrator rebelling against his lifeless, routine existence. In other words, “I can’t do this crap anymore.”
See page 29, the narrator’s shock is called Heimlich or the uncanny, a person who shows up is both strange but familiar.
See page 31, the narrator begins to scrutinize Bartleby’s anti-social lifestyle, which is really his own: never going out for dinner, never going out at all.
See page 35 and 36, he’s going to church and he decides to visit Bartleby but has a vision of himself. “Both Bartleby and I were sons of Adam.” Yes, they’re brothers, the same person in fact.
See 38, by wanting to keep Bartleby employed and by wanting to help him, he really wants to heal himself.
See 39, he starts talking like Bartleby.
See 44, “Will you, or will you not, quite me?” Bartleby must stay to show the narrator the truth about himself.
See 48, “I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
See 50, the narrator’s career suggestions reflect his will to expand his own horizons.
See 53, the real condition of the narrator, dead, or not even born yet, feet curled up in the fetal position.
Three: What is the role of food in the story? Hunger, love, approval.
See 26, the narrator is preoccupied with what his employees are eating, cake and apples, spicy treats of all kinds.
See 28, the narrator uses figurative language of gorging and consuming as a way of working.
See 28, the narrator is preoccupied with other people’s digestion in the same way I want everyone in my family to eat lots of fiber.
See page 31, he notices Bartleby, a bland man, craves spice, and only eats ginger cookies.
See what page, I don’t know, but narrator is looking for a “morsel of approval” by doing good deeds.
Four: How do we know the narrator’s office has become his coffin?
See page 22, his chambers are deficient in life.
Writing Assignment
We read the following epigram in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées 806
“We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.”
In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that connects Pascal’s famous passage to the American Success Myth in a critique of the narrator in Herman Melville’s famous short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Your essay should have 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Study Questions
One. What evidence is there that everything the narrator says is the opposite of the truth? For example, when he says he “has been filled with the profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.” What does that mean on various levels?
The earlier we see the narrator as a duplicitous coward the better. He has a core of decency, but he has allowed his work to take over his life. He has escaped his higher responsibilities to self and community by mastering his work while allowing his real self to wither away.
In truth, he is a man with no “profound conviction” but is “running scared,” conforming to society’s definition of success based on appearances, hard work, and money.
On an unconscious level, he knows his life is a colossal failure, but he has devoted his life to concealing this fact from others and himself. He reminds us of a famous quote from Blaise Pascal.
Pascal Pensées 806
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.”
Pascal is observing how we devote more energy to putting up a façade, and all this energy constructs this exterior life while the real life inside rots and withers away. Perhaps we can read the story as a fever dream in which Bartleby is the true dying self of the narrator.
Without conviction, the narrator relies on the approval of others to legitimize his existence. His reliance makes him needy and desperate. No amount of fake success can fill the emptiness, loneliness, neediness, and despair that define his existence.
He is a tragic man because he has no conviction of a core self; rather, his identity is that of a myth: The Myth of the Hard-Working American whose financial success and social rank give him a sense of authority, wisdom, and wellbeing. In fact, as the story continues, we realize the narrator has no authority, wisdom, or wellbeing, but fear, fallacy, and despair.
The narrator’s downward descent is a classic case of impoverishment through substitution, the feeble attempt to replace basic human needs—belonging, connection, love, and intimacy—with cheap substitutes—consumerism, binge eating, or any addiction.
What makes the narrator all the more tragic is that he is a learned man with a high degree of literacy and critical thinking skills; however, his pathology, being absorbed by the Myth, prevents him from applying his critical thinking skills to his own life. Therefore, his education is worthless.
Intelligence, learnedness, and education are all worthless if we don’t have the metacognition to change our lives. The narrator can see the trees of his existence, but he can’t see the forest. His lack of metacognition is so extreme that he is a condition of madness.
One of the story’s themes is that when we embrace a Myth with complete abandon, we lose our metacognition and critical thinking and descend into madness.
Two. Read the narrator’s line: “All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man.” How should we interpret his claim to being a safe man in the context of the story?
If by “safe” the narrator means he takes no risks in terms of deviating from his rigid routine and establishing relationships and the resulting intimacy, yes indeed, he is “safe.”
But his safety or coping mechanism to cut himself off from spontaneity, from change, from people, and from the normal challenges of life becomes a form of maladaptation. He is a prisoner of his own pathological definition of what it means to be safe. In fact, by safe we mean he’s a prisoner by his need to be “safe.” Therefore, he is not safe at all, but vulnerable to being chronically lonely and suffering the distorted perceptions that such isolated, lonely people have.
His loneliness and condition of being cut off from life in his “safety prison” or bubble makes him live vicariously through others. Therefore, we see the narrator is fond of speaking admirably of big names that he keeps in his office like John Jacob Astor.
Our narrator lives too much in his head and is vulnerable to many delusions, including the idea that his being prudent or safe makes him admirable when in fact he is withering away in his office.
One of the most important lessons is that the narrator, a well-spoken and very literate man, believes in his own BS. Later in the story when we see the little homunculus Bartleby chant the mantra, “I prefer not to,” we will be compelled to see that mantra a rebellion and a refusal to participate in the narrator’s BS, what amounts to a life that is built on lies.
In many ways it could be argued that Bartleby has come to hand the narrator his butt to him on a stick, and he has in fact, but the narrator is too insulated by his layers upon layers of façade to see the truth.
The narrator’s tragedy is that he has been lying to himself for so long he no longer knows he is lying. So for all his literacy and privilege, he is a failure. He is a man who gained the world, ascending America’s financial and social rankings, but lost his soul. In this sense, the narrator is a casualty of the American Success Myth.
In the third paragraph, we seem him continue to bloviate about his success: how his “avocations had been largely increased.” He is getting more and more work and is poised to hire another person.
Additionally, he boasts that he is safe, prudent, and in control: “I seldom lose my temper, much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages.”
Even as he boasts about his success, we see that he is a prisoner with windows with no view at all as they are blocked by large walls so that he is a prisoner inside a “huge square cistern.”
Three. How do the employees’ names seem less realistic and more comic and dream-like?
The great Melville critic William B. Dillingham observes with great insight that the story’s narrator has a preoccupation with food and that he seeks food as compensation for the self-approval and validation he constantly lacks.
Not surprisingly, then, the narrator’s three employees have “food names”: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut.
It appears Turkey, a man close to sixty, is a raging alcoholic evidenced by his face “of a fine florid hue.” We also read, “it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals.” His work is prone to sloppiness, and he smells like a homeless person, but the narrator tolerates Turkey’s flaws, apparently too set in his ways to fire Turkey for his reckless drinking and malodorous clothing. The narrator rationalizes that Turkey is competent and productive till 12:00 P.M. and he seems content with a half-day’s good work. Additionally, the narrator claims to have empathy for Turkey since they are both the same age.
More likely, however, the narrator fears a confrontation with Turkey, evidencing the narrator’s cowardice and lack of control.
Turkey’s volatile behavior is too extreme to be realistic. Rather, he a parody figure worthy of a comedy TV show or an absurd dream. I believe in fact the story is best read as a dream with an allegorical message rather than some realistic study.
Nippers looks like a 25-year-old pirate. He suffers from ambition and indigestion, the “two evil powers” that rule him.
He grinds his teeth and hisses rather than speak. Nippers can never balance his table in spite of constantly putting chips beneath the legs.
We read that Nippers makes extra money by doing side jobs that may be a conflict of interest with the narrator’s business, but the narrator tolerates Nippers’ extracurricular activities, he claims, because Nippers is valuable to him. In fact, the narrator exploits these two eccentric employees and has made a calculation that their faults are compensated by the degree to which the narrator can exploit them. Of course, the narrator would have us believe otherwise, that it is the narrator’s fair-minded prudence and sense of compassion that compels him to keep the employees.
Indeed, we read again and again that the narrator refers to his employees as being “valuable,” reduced to monetary units.
At one point, the narrator gives Turkey a new coat, but Turkey perceives this gift as an insult and is overcome with “insolent” outrage.
Nippers is also a drinker. His drink of choice is brandy, and he suffers from alcohol-fueled tantrums when trying to balance his table.
Again, Nipper’s existence, like Turkey’s, is too farcical to be realistic and lends itself to parody or someone’s fever dream.
Ginger Nut is a twelve-year-old errand boy whose father, a hard laborer, wants his son to be spared his father’s dreadful fate. However, by the looks of the office, office work isn’t much of an improvement; rather, it is its own sort of hell on earth.
Regarding his employees, we see that the narrator spends a great deal of time observing and chronicling their eating and drinking activities: various seltzers, nut mixes, spicy cakes, and apples.
Even as the narrator observes the Bartleby’s initial hard work, he writes, “There was no pause for digestion.”
Four. Discuss the theme of workaholism in the story.
Using money and social rank as metrics for wellbeing becomes a vicious cycle and a no-win game with final goal. The workaholic addiction is self-feeding: The more one concentrates on the job the less one has a parallel life outside the office to create a balance. Without this balance, the worker tries even harder to compensate for the lack of a connected self (connected to family and friends) by connecting with work. But work connections are limited to the objectives of the jobsite: money and social rank.
Notice the narrator never makes mention of home life or of a wife or of any friends. By neglecting to give us any information about his life outside the office, we can assume the office is his entire life: It is the cesspool that consumes every fiber of his being.
The arrival of Bartleby, who answers the narrator’s ad for help, further illustrates the theme of workaholism.
The image of Bartleby, if looked at as if through the narrator’s dream, is a metaphorical image of the narrator himself: “I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!”
If the physical narrator is plump from the comforts of his high income, his spirit—embodied by Bartleby, is the spirit of a forlorn, emaciated homunculus.
The narrator makes Bartleby work in a hideous prison, a sort of squalid dungeon, which only the most unfeeling boss would assign. Soon enough, Bartleby will begin to waste away in work conditions so brutal that Nippers and Turkey can only tolerate it with the help of alcohol.
Not everyone interprets the story this way. This interpretation is my inclination, and that of other critics as well. We can call this the Bartleby Alter Ego Interpretation. Such an interpretation tends to see the story more as an allegorical dream.
Take, for example, the part in which the narrator describes Bartleby as never leaving the office: “I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed, that he never went anywhere. As yet I had never, of my personal knowledge, known him to be outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner.” His diet is ginger-nuts. This “hot and spicy” cookie fails to compensate for the insipid, bland existence that defines the narrator’s. In many ways, this mirrors the narrator’s existence.
Initially, Bartleby works like the workaholic the narrator is, “copying by sunlight and candle-light.”
But after three days in this allegorical dream of a story, Bartleby appears to suffer job burnout, lethargy, ennui, depression, and stubborn defiance. The narrator is shocked that after giving an order Bartleby does not respond with “instant compliance”; rather, the emaciated homunculus responds in a calm voice: “I prefer not to.”
The narrator is stunned. He repeats his order and Bartleby again says, “I would prefer not to.”
Five. What are the multiple meanings of “I would prefer not to”?
Bartleby seems to be offering passive resistance or passive noncompliance. Not only is Bartleby rejecting his boss’s orders specifically, but he is also rejecting society’s scripts, which encourage us to become mindless workers and consumers: docile, compliant sheep who conform to society’s blueprint for living, which in reality is a form of death.
He seems to be not only rejecting his boss’s order but also rejecting his boss’s entire existence, as if to say, “I would prefer not to turn out like you.” Thus Bartleby’s mantra can be seen as an existential admonishment against the narrator: “Your life is a bunch of phony BS, and I’m not following your path.”
Bartleby’s words are more damning because he remains calm, lucid, polite, and firm evidencing that he is not being capricious or impulsive. In contrast, his boss is overcome by anxiety by Bartleby’s noncompliance and Bartleby’s cool-headedness gives him the upper hand.
The dynamic between subordinate—the cool one—and boss—the anxiety-laden one—is not a dynamic that the narrator wishes to have because such a dynamic contradicts the narrator’s delusion that he is a cool-headed authority figure who has control over his office and his life. Bartleby is living evidence that the narrator’s life is a precariously stacked pack of cards made into a tower that will collapse any second.
The story speaks to the way most of us create these elaborate facades that blind us from the foolishness and wasted lives that define us.
The narrator’s response is one of great agitation. However, he is more curious than offended, so he is not ready to fire Bartleby just yet.
The narrator also feels helpless to do anything about it, but rationalizes that he “will forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future leisure.”
A few days later, Bartleby issues the same refusal and the narrator is, by his own words, “turned into a pillar of salt.” This speaks to the narrator no longer being a living being but a dead man, a creature of petrification, a mummy with money.
The words, “I would prefer not to” also contrast Bartleby’s conviction with the narrator’s self-doubt and cowardice. He must rely on his other employees to tell Bartleby—and himself—that Bartleby’s noncompliance is unacceptable and crazy because in part the narrator lacks the core conviction to make his reprimand on his own.
Six. Seeing himself as dead is, ironically, a moment of hope and the part of the story where the narrator feels deeply connected to Bartleby. Why?
We tend to resist change unless we have a radical, subversive force that opens the gates to us and points us to a higher realm. Many men, for example, remain animals and troglodytes until the “right woman” transforms them into a Romantic Gentleman.
In the same way, the narrator has been dead so long he no longer knows he is dead. He lives in a state of prolonged ignorance, what in Arabic is called the Jahiliyyah.
Bartleby has “strangely disarmed” the narrator. As we read, “But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me.”
The possibility of rejecting society’s script and no longer conforming to a life that is slowly killing the narrator floods him with both hope and fear. He’s hopeful that there may be a better life than the lonely one he leads, but he’s also fearful of it, because such a life represents the Unknown.
As we read from the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard: “Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit.”
But the narrator squanders his opportunity to see the abject futility of his existence and instead tries to “save” or “help” Bartleby in order that he can “purchase a delicious self-approval.” The narrator appears to want to feel good about himself and he thinks tolerating Bartleby’s noncompliance should be an easy ticket to proving his charity and self-worth.
The narrator is a selfish man who is looking to appear good “on the cheap.” As he writes, “To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.”
But his intentions are contaminated, and he admits to the “evil impulse” to goad Bartleby so he can test his subordinate’s compliance.
Seven. How is Bartleby the narrator’s ghost who’s come to haunt him like the ghosts in Scrooge?
The narrator says of Bartleby: “he was always there” and this perhaps evidences the mirror effect: The narrator sees himself and on an unconscious level he identifies and pities Bartleby, this lonely, isolated homunculus with no life being eaten away by the prison of work without love and intimacy.
On the other hand, Bartleby’s rebellion against being told what to do is completely unearthly and shocking to the narrator who conforms to society’s script of success. While the narrator does his best to impress us with his self-assured control and worldly success, he inadvertently reveals himself to be a lost, volatile, lonely, petty man. The longer his ghost doppelganger (double) remains in his office the more he must see the true nature of his failed self.
As the ghost stays in the office, he keeps his calm; on the other hand, while the narrator must co-exist with Bartleby, he grows more and more tormented by agitation. This agitation consumes him, for remember, the narrator desires nothing more than a clear conscience. Bartleby does not allow that.
The more we see the narrator in the throes of mental torment the more we begin to see that he may be completely mad. For example, the narrator claims he was on his way to Trinity Church and just happened to drop in at the office. Perhaps it’s more likely that he goes to the office on Sundays, but he’s trying to obscure this fact by saying he was on his way to church.
On the Sunday in question, he spies on Bartleby and sees himself: in a stated of “tattered deshabille,” shabbily dressed and in general consumed by his never-ending work. We further read this description: “Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired.”
The narrator feels emasculated in Bartleby’s presence: “Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises.”
The narrator sees that Bartleby eats merely for fuel so he can be a slave of his ongoing work. He fuels himself on cheese and ginger-nuts. He is a cog in the machine, a reflection of the narrator’s failed, moribund existence. The narrator is even worse than Bartleby because the narrator’s slavery is self-induced and self-chosen, and here lies the story’s tragedy: A man chooses to live a life of death and slavery because he is afraid of life.
The story must act as a sort of comedy, like 30 Rock or The Office, because the narrator’s self-importance and pretentiousness is being deflated by the mockery of the imp Bartleby.
Often, the narrator’s descriptions of Bartleby seem like a description of his own depressed, bereft existence:
“Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”
This vision of himself overcomes the narrator with sadness:
“For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.”
The narrator takes a look at Bartleby’s desk and its contents and does an inventory of Bartleby’s life, which may be like that of his own. He contemplates the window looking out at the “dead brick wall,” a tomb-like image to house the dead, and not unlike the cubicles that many employees find themselves trapped in working for corporate America as “they live the dream.”
Eight. Does the narrator heed the ghost’s warning about his own death?
The short answer is no. Rather than look at his own pathology and mental illness evidenced by his workaholic compulsion, the narrator attempts to convince himself that Bartleby is the one who is sick: “What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.”
Sadly, it may be the narrator’s own soul that he cannot reach because the narrator is to invested in the American Success Myth to let go of it.
Bartleby is not sick because his sickness is a natural reaction to an even sicker work environment that treats its workers like cogs in a machine.
We should all be hard workers and take pride in the conviction, integrity, and professionalism that we bear at our job, but our work effort has to be within reason. Not having a life outside work, like the narrator, is unreasonable.
Because the narrator has convinced himself that it is Bartleby, and not him and his extended work environment, that is mentally ill, all of the narrator’s efforts to “help” Bartleby are rooted in falseness. Of course, the narrator will see himself as engaging in Christian charity, but this is a smokescreen for a man who is fortifying his mentally ill fortress of the American Success Myth.
The narrator is not real with Bartleby at this point in the story; rather, he is patronizing and phony in his charitable attitude.
Nine. How does the narrator’s agitation become more acute after his so-called conversion for feeling empathy for Bartleby?
In spite of saying there is a “bond of humanity” between them, the narrator fights for his jobsite territory and defends the idea that he is sane by mocking Bartleby. He encourages Nippers and Turkey to join in the mockery by mimicking Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to.”
It appears the narrator is becoming more and more unhinged, which is to say, emotionally dislocated. All the while, Bartleby remains calm and the narrator notices that his subordinate does “nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery.” Deep down, I suspect the narrator admires Bartleby who knows himself and has a core to his being; in contrast, the narrator is anxious and fearful and has no real self-knowledge.
Bartleby even stops writing and we hear him speak beyond his mantra when the narrator asks him why he has stopped writing: “Do you not see the reason for yourself?”
The narrator tries to maintain his façade of calm even as he descends into anxiety-stricken madness: “I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness.” That is a comically colossal understatement. Bartleby does not “occasion” the narrator “uneasiness.” Bartleby has gone deep inside the narrator’s brain, turned into the narrator’s obsession, and ruptured the very feeble foundation of the narrator’s being.
Wanting this reminder of his failed life gone from his existence and embarrassed by his presence in his office, the narrator is desperate to be rid of Bartleby, so he attempts to terminate him. His attempt is seen as Judas of Iscariot, the biblical story of betrayal, by the narrator’s offering of sixpences and shillings to Bartleby.
As the narrator obsesses over Bartleby’s possible leaving, he converses with himself, making a wager over whether or not Bartleby will be gone from the office. Clearly, the narrator has descended another tier into madness.
When Bartleby is still in the office, the narrator admits the power this homunculus has over him: “But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of-perplexity.”
The narrator’s ego is hurt as he contemplates that this is unacceptable: “permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me—this, too, I could not think of.”
Ten. What evidences the narrator’s deepening madness in the aftermath of Bartleby refusing to quit?
The narrator now makes reference to a murder, that of Samuel Adams at the hands of John C. Colt, and appears to be referring to his own murderous desires. The narrator is getting more and more unhinged. His falling apart is really the only plot line of the story. A character going more and more mad is part of the comedic formula we see in much television, which is why many consider the story to be a precursor in many ways of the comic TV show.
Rather than confront his crisis as an opportunity to take a work break and rehabilitate, the narrator is resolved, foolishly, to work even harder: “I endeavored, also, immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to comfort my despondency.”
As his obsession deepens, he begins to contemplate that Bartleby was thrust upon him by fate or destiny, forces beyond the narrator’s control.
The narrator is further vexed by the people who go into the office and observe the silent homunculus. These observations are bad for the narrator’s image, a façade that he has invested much in to impress the world.
Whatever compassion the narrator may or may not have for Bartleby, it’s clear he has more invested in his work image than he does in showing compassion for people, including himself.
His desperation to be rid of Bartleby is so great that he moves his office to another location. He has the furniture removed. He abandons Bartleby.
At this point, we see the narrator’s ambivalence toward Bartleby, as a source of anguish and hope: “I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.”
When a lawyer approaches the narrator at his new law office and makes inquiries about the silent homunculus, the narrator feigns ignorance in an attempt to abnegate any responsibility for the mysterious imp.
After a week or so, a landlord of the old building visits the narrator and charges responsibility to the narrator for Bartleby’s removal.
Eleven. What is the irony concerning the conversation about the narrator’s five career recommendations?
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“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?” |
197 |
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“No; I would prefer not to make any change.” |
198 |
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“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?” |
199 |
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“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.” |
200 |
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“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!” |
201 |
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“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once. |
202 |
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“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.” |
203 |
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“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.” |
204 |
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His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. |
205 |
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“Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.” |
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“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.” |
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“How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?” |
208 |
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“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.” |
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“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—one which had not been wholly unindulged before. |
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“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my office, but my dwelling—and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.” |
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“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.” Irony in the Above Exchange The irony is that Bartleby appears isolated and enslaved by his immobility, but he is a free man, true to himself. In contrast, the narrator is a successful American businessman who is a slave to his fear, and yet it is the narrator who feels compelled to give Bartleby advice when it should be the other way around. Twelve. How does the narrator’s conversation with the grub-man reveal the narrator’s true nature? After the narrator pays the grub-man to care for Bartleby (no doubt guilt-induced), the grub-man asks the narrator if he knows a notorious forger. The narrator denies knowing any forgers, but in fact his entire existence is a colossal forgery. As William Dillingham points out with keen insight, the narrator is right that he does not know a forger because he is too ignorant of his true self—his true, counterfeit, forging self—to even know that he does in fact know one. Bartleby’s death is a silent protest to the American Success Myth, and all its vanity and forgery, embodied by the story’s narrator. |
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