Bartleby

The Story of Wall Street" is a long short story has become among the most famous American short stories. It has been considered a precursor to absurdist literature, written in the very middle of the 19th century during industrialization and capitalist business practices. The narrator, an elderly lawyer who has a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages, title deeds, and bonds, relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known. The narrator already employs two scriveners, ippers and Turkey. ippers suffers from chronic indigestion, and Turkey is a drunk, but the office survives because in the mornings Turkey is sober even though ippers is irritable, and in the afternoon, ippers has calmed down even though Turkey is drunk. !inger ut, the office boy, gets his name from the little cakes he brings the older men. The narrator places an ad for another scrivener, "artleby comes in to answer to an employment ad, and the narrator hires the forlorn#looking young man in hopes that his calmness will soothe the temperaments of the other scriveners.

$ne day, when the narrator asks "artleby to help proofread a copied document, "artleby answers simply, %I would prefer not to.% To the dismay of the narrator and the irritation of the other employees, "artleby performs fewer and fewer duties around the office. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with "artleby The loneliness of "artleby&s life strikes the narrator 'ven then, the narrator cannot get him to leave. The reluctant scrivener has a strange power over his employer, (ome time afterward, the narrator conveys a rumor that shed a brief insight into "artleby&s life. "artleby worked in a )ead *etter $ffice, but lost his +ob there. The narrator reflects that the dead letters would have made anyone of "artleby&s temperament sink into an even darker gloom. The letters are emblems for our mortality and the failure of our best intentions.

the last undelivered communications to the dead are burned without ever having been read. Through "artleby, the narrator has glimpsed the world as the
miserable scrivener must have seen it. The closing words of the story are the narrator&s resigned and pained sigh, %Ah, "artleby- Ah, humanity-% it is human nature to have faults. however losing the ability to emote and connect with one/s surrounding world is perhaps the greatest tragedy an individual could go through or witness.

"artleby is described as completely emotionless, at one point 01 he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically2. 3e is also described as a ghost. It should be pointed out that the narrator/s problems with his other employees have to do with their unreliability, sloppiness, drunkenness, and flaring tempers. (o Turkey and ippers are 4uite the opposite of "artleby, yet the main conflict that %"artleby the (crivener% presents is an internal one, that is, how is the narrator to deal with someone who appears to be void of any human attributes5 This story intimates a dichotomy between the people who profit off of such business, and those more in the working class like "artleby, Turkey, and ippers, and the long arduous work they are sub+ected#to should be brought out as they are essentially human copy machines. Thus, a theme emerges about alienation of workers under such social conditions and dehumanizing conse4uences.

The work environment is sterile and cheerless the position was deemed redundant and eliminated. We learn later that Bartleby may have lost a job due to similar bureaucratic change. The modern economy includes constant and unfeeling change, which comes at a cost. extends the scope of the story from the business world to the general human condition. Bartleby cannot pretend to have enthusiasm for this bleak world, and so he disengages from it, in stages, until he dies. Adopting to Inhumanity as world of business kills humans Even charity cant help

By making his climax and falling action so swift, Melville forces the reader to be more considerate of everything leading up to it. extraordinarily ahead of its time, dealing with issues such as the rise of middle-class job dissatisfaction and depression, as well as realizing the future significance of all !treet to "merican life. #et it is also a deeply symbolic work$ there are few, if any, real-life Bartlebys, telling their employers they would %prefer not% to do something, yet remaining at that place of business. &nder this interpretation, the 'awyer represents the ordinary reader, who desires that Melville continue %copying% his earlier works, while Melville, pained by the failure of Moby Dick, replies that he would %prefer not to,% and finally stops writing entirely. (he %dead letters,% therefore, are Melville)s shunned novels.