“Bartleby, the scrivener: A story of Wall street” 753breaks his neck in a suicidal leap to cheat the hang-
man. Despite already being dead, Blue Duck’s body
is hanged by the local sheriff because that was the
sentence. Call witnesses perverted justice served
twice as Blue Duck kills himself and then his body
is hanged anyway.
In the world of Lonesome Dove, while the scales
swing wildly back and forth between instances of
terrible injustice and righteous rewards for the just,
the principle of justice wins out in the end.
Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.
mELviLLE, HErman “bartleby, the
Scrivener: a^ Story of Wall Street”^ (1853)
In the summer of 1853, his writing career at low ebb
following the critical and popular failure of Moby-
Dick and Pierre, Herman Melville began writing
short stories. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of
Wall Street” was immensely successful among read-
ers and critics when it was published in 1853 in
Putnam’s Magazine; today it remains a prime object
of Melville scholarship.
“Bartleby,” like most of Melville’s fiction, is
told in the first person. The narrator, a character in
the story, defines the action of the tale, sets out its
parameters, and provides his own interpretation of
events. Besides Bartleby and the lawyer, the other
characters are Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut,
scriveners and workers who are part of the factory-
like office and perform tedious work for little pay.
Through these characters Melville explores such
themes as religion, commerce, identity, isola-
tion, work, and the individual and society.
The tyranny of the marketplace had a personal
relevance for Melville, and many critics have
observed that Bartleby’s behavior as a scrivener
closely parallels Melville’s own writing career
or, by extension, the position of any artist in a
commercial world. Other people mentioned as a
model for the character of Bartleby include Henry
David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mel-
ville’s brother, Alan. The number and variety of
parallels show how open “Bartleby” is to multiple
interpretations.
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a many faceted tale,
and the reader can thrill to the spookiness of the
cadaverous Bartleby, match wits with the lawyer in
trying to decide how to deal with the problem, or
challenge the narrator’s version of events, for the
lawyer reveals much that he does not acknowledge.
Susan Ampercommerce in “Bartleby, the scrivener”
The title character of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is
representative of alienated workers in the 19th-
century commercial marketplace, damned by dollars
and deadened to life, and the lawyer, who serves as
the tale’s narrator, is revealed as a materialist and
capitalist. The story can be read as an attack on the
excesses of industrialization and commerce. The
tale announces itself in its very subtitle as “A Story
of Wall Street,” the financial center of American
capitalism. The lawyer, too, identifies himself first
in terms of his vocation. He is a financial attor-
ney, who does “a snug business among rich men’s
bond, and mortgages, and title-deeds,” and who
boasts acquaintance with, and admiration for, that
quintessential capitalist, John Jacob Astor. Besides
working for capitalists, the lawyer is one himself.
The Wall Street business he owns is the image
of 19th-century industrialism: a dim and dismal
workplace in which underpaid workers labor at
dull, repetitive jobs. The office is not literally a
factory, yet the building, in the lawyer’s words,
“hums with industry.” The scriveners might be
regarded as white-collar workers, yet they are paid
piecework—four cents per 100 words—like factory
workers. They earn, the lawyer himself admits, “so
small an income” that a man could “not afford to
eat, drink, and own a decent coat at the same time.”
The lawyer’s focus on money is further revealed in
his many references to it. He tells the reader how
much his office boy, Ginger Nut, earns, how much
the scriveners, Turkey and Nippers, are paid, the
price of ginger cakes and how many of them Ginger
Nut receives for purchasing them for Bartleby. After
Bartleby’s continued refusal to work, the lawyer
attempts to induce Bartleby to vacate the premises
by offering him $20, and at the Tombs prison, the
lawyer pays the grub-man to give Bartleby the “best
dinner” he can.
The socioeconomic dimension of “Bartleby,”
established before the title character’s arrival, is