His first five novels fictionalize his personal experiences: Herman Melville (1819-1891) Author of Moby Dick (1851), Melville was not recognized as a major writer until the 1920’s. His first five novels fictionalize his personal experiences: 1846—Typee: held in captivity by Typee natives. 1847—Omoo: relates his stay in Tahiti. 1849—Mardi: loaded with allegory and symbolism, a scattered and rambling narrative of a quester among Pacific islanders. 1849—Redburn: based on his first voyage as a sensitive youth among callous sailors. 1850—Whitejacket: based on his experiences on a naval vessel.
Melville’s writings are like a synthesis of James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like Cooper he is drawn to frontier settings and is fascinated with space and movement; like Hawthorne he is almost a Calvinist in his preoccupation with Man’s fallen nature. His work is concerned with the dark side of human nature. Hawthorne says of Melville: “He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief.” Melville on Hawthorne: “He says NO! in thunder.” Melville’s task is to try and shed some light on the unknowable. Thus his art often seems unfinished. Melville believed that all great art was like an unfinished cathedral. He asks questions, but rarely provides answers.
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” “Bartleby” was published in Putnam’s Magazine in 1853, then reprinted in Melville’s collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales (1856). Wall motif: “Bartleby” is subtitled “A Story of Wall Street.” Bartleby is hemmed in by walls, like Chinese boxes: He is walled in behind the screen in a corner of the lawyer’s office. He is enclosed in the walls of the office itself. The view from the window of the office is a wall. Bartleby dies, huddled by the walls of the prison known as “The Tombs.”
The Lawyer The lawyer: is he a type of “everyman?” (An “everyman” has come to mean an ordinary individual in a play or story who represents common humanity). He leads a safe, prudent existence. Is Bartleby’s retreat simply an extreme form of the lawyer’s own retreat? A “safe” man: note the ambiguities of the word safe. Is the lawyer enclosed in his safe world in the same way valuables are locked in a safe? Can this be a metaphor for the lawyer’s own walled in existence?
Bartleby Bartleby: is he a figure to be pitied? Has life walled him in? Is he an idealist who refuses to compromise? One critic remarks “ Bartleby has a vision of life’s futility which he can never overcome . . . finally the tomb seems best of all.” In contrast with Bartleby, the lawyer, his employer and only friend, has made an apparently effortless compromise with life. Bartleby does have a positive effect on the lawyer. He stimulates him to rise above his selfish concerns, to get out of himself, and to concern himself with someone else. Bartleby has an ironic, passive power over others. His “I would prefer not to” affects other’s lives, and they end up picking up the very phrase he uses.
Themes in “Bartleby”: The unlived life/ the undelivered letter. It is rumored that Bartleby once worked at the Dead Letter Office. In a different vein, we can see how another individual dealt with isolation: This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me— The simple News that Nature told— With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see— For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen Judge tenderly—of Me
A life walled in: another version of the unlived life. Wall Street time (time is money) vs. Bartleby’s imperviousness to time (time as stasis, or perhaps simply timelessness). Bartleby as everyman/ the lawyer as everyman. Questions to consider: The narrator says the easiest way of life is the best. Does he really believe this in light of everything he does for Bartleby? Is this Bartleby’s story, or the narrator’s? Is Bartleby an idealist who refuses to compromise, or is guilty of abandoning his humanity? Is his is isolation caused by society, or is it self-imposed?