English 1 B Student S. Moskvychov
Instructor C. Kleinman 11 / 20 / 2010
Revised “Bartleby” Zine draft
Bartleby’s Personality and Job Motivation
The author of Bartleby, the Scrivener Herman Melville worked many years as the employee in one office and could observe various kinds of work behavior. Obviously, such a way it has been embodied in the character of Bartleby. Maybe Melville’s hero remained him some former colleagues, and the way, how the employers managed their work behavior. Nevertheless, not everything is understandable enough in this tragedy. Only one thing is clear: in order to know Bartleby’s motives and answer the question, how they influence his deeds and attitude to work, it is necessary to concentrate upon the scrivener’s personality.
In general scriveners are much happier at work than many other illiterate people who had to do more monotonous and hardier work. As well, they are happier of those unemployment people who, for example, in Philip Levine’s What Work Is, “stand, “in the rain in a long line waiting…
for work”, and often get refusal, “to the hours wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead…a man…will say, “’No, we’ll not hiring today”’(2, 2, 21). Despite getting a good job, which feeds him and even serves as a shelter, Bartleby lets himself not to submit the employer. Asking to do any urgent or timed work, the employer every time hears only one mysterious phrase: “I would prefer not to”(2, 27). This problem is topical even nowadays, especially at the time of financial crises. When everybody has to set a high value on his/her job, in order to survive and support their families, and when many men and women agree to do any work and to obey anybody. So the main issue, which arises in connection with H. Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener is not the monotonous, uninteresting job, which many people really don’t like, but special psychological state of Bartleby and the peculiarity of his personality that prevent to behave adequately at work. In other words, it is the issue of attitude to work, which is very actual one.
Once more issue we have to analyze is predominantly social, even politic one. The matter is Bartleby is an alienated worker, a real subject of capitalistic exploitation. He understands own, situation, does not like it, and naturally can’t be satisfied with his job. The only way to change such a situation, according to Marx, is proletarian revolution when the workers become the proprietors of all plants and factories, other enterprises and offices, and nobody exploits them. It is true Bartleby isn’t that kind of worker (not that kind of personality) who is capable for collective class struggle. He is absolutely individualistic character and organizes his life by own means. Let’s agree with those critics who mean that Bartleby was a new hero in American society, a radically new personality, the one who individually, “emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry, untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances of family and race; an individual standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling ready to confront whatever awaited him with the aid of his own unique and inherent resources” (1, 2).
Though some critics (practical moralists) contend that, being more virtuous or benevolent, the lawyer could do or offer Bartleby some suitable perspective, nobody of them suggests a real specific form of help (1, 3), practically nobody really can to help him. The manager in H. Melville’s story tries to help Bartleby several times. He gives the scrivener various possibilities to release from deep feeling and repressed emotions. The lawyer tries to tolerate and any way accommodate Bartleby. Firstly during rather long time he shows patience and doesn’t punish the scrivener for ignoring manager’s instructions. Being a humanistic person, lawyer understands that being dismissed from the job Bartleby simply will starve. Moreover, he tries to explain Bartleby the necessity to behave adequately at work in order to reserve his working place. But all the time the manager fails and is unable to understand Bartleby’s motives and his: “I would prefer not to.” Only after failing in attempt to clarify Bartleby’s personal situation, the lawyer at first abandons Bartleby in his vacated offices and then – practically “brings” him to the Deep Letter, which is the logical result of Bartleby’s inadequate job behavior. Unfortunately, such a way lawyer “passively contributes to and subsequently approves of the scrivener being put in prison for vagrancy” (1, 4). Later on the lawyer urges the jail authorities to be compassionate. He even pays a prison cook to upgrade the scrivener's food. But all of these efforts to help Bartleby are limited and ineffective, and at long last the scrivener dies.
In order to summarize mentioned above, let’s agree that Bartleby personality is very complicated and contradictory one. His attitude to work is not simple, even almost mysterious one. That is why the lawyer can’t manage his job adequately, and the scrivener himself is unable to organize own life such a way that to be well to do and satisfied.
Works Cited
Kleinman, Craig. More contexts // Work and Money. Individualism and Heroism. Morals
and Religion. Compassion and Connection.– “Bartleby” Zine Windows Internet
Explorer. http://insight.ccsf.edu/file.php/1820/bartlebycontexts.
Levine, Philip. What Work Is // Literature. A Portable Anthology. Second
Edition. – 2009 MLA Update – Bed ford/St. Martin’s. Boston – New York.- P. 615-616.
Melville, Herman. Bartleby, the Scrivener // Literature. A Portable Anthology. Second
Edition. – 2009 MLA Update – Bed ford/St. Martin’s. Boston – New York.- P.20-50.
