Bartleby, the Scrivener
September 2005
Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a particular story about the issues raised by Bartleby after his being employed as a Scrivener by a lawyer on Wall Street. The narrator provides the reader with a first-hand account of the issues and emotions raised by Bartleby throughout the story, and though it is Bartleby who is the catalyst for these issues, the impacts of these issues are felt through the narrator. Indeed, the narrator proved to be central to the story, in that he provides the story with a more human view. He tells the story from his own view as he sees and experiences the events, allowing the reader to see and experience the impacts these events have on the narrator as a realistic person rather than from a removed view in which emotion experienced by the narrator is limited to non-existent. Rather than experiencing the story from a removed perspective, as would be from a third and/or removed party, the story would loose not only the importance of certain events only recognizable from a first-hand account, but also the realistic and emotional depth of the story. The narrator’s personal account of the events, his realistic reactions to these events and the emotion experienced and portrayed by him are all examples of how he is a central character to the story.
Though the reader is never told his name, the narrator’s personality and character are expressed enough that the reader is able to relate to him. In relating to him, the reader is more deeply drawn to the events unfolding, as the events are told from the narrator’s perspective, a character they are familiar with and can relate to even if in the most minute way. Just as “The bond of a common humanity now drew me [
the narrator] irresistibly to
gloom” (p. 54) in regards to Bartleby, so too do those bonds draw the reader to the narrator as he relates his first-hand, personal accounts of the events as they unfold. It is these first hand accounts which are so important in relaying not only the message but also understand it from a humanistic viewpoint rather than an impassive one.
In having the narrator relate his experiences first-hand, the story is more realistic and better understood than if it had been a more removed view. His descriptions, opinions and reactions to the events are that of a human experiencing the events, rather than a removed narrator attempting to describe emotions which is not felt, or telling the story from a purely rational and impartial view. Just as “What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him” (p. 44) for the narrator, so to is that all the reader knows. The telling of a person’s story directly from a first-hand perspective gives the story a more realistic view and feel, as though the events occurred in reality and giving the story a more realistic feel. It is also in providing this realistic view the story which makes the narrator central to the story.
A person’s story looses emotional impact when told from a removed perspective rather than from a personal and first-hand account. Though a removed view can relate general emotions felt by the characters, they are unable to truly express the depth of those emotions which can only be truly related by those experiencing them. Just as they narrator tells as that his “first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity . . . did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity in repulsion” (p. 55) when he sits and think about Bartleby in the same manner to which the reader would if presented with the situation, the emotions felt by the narrator have deeper meaning in that they come from the person experiencing the events. The reader can relate and understand these emotions not only because they come directly from a person which they can relate to, but also because it is the same intensity which the reader would experience if in the same situation. In providing such depth to the emotion of the story, the narrator adds depth to the theme and becomes a central character.
Though reader told his name, the narrator of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is central to the story. The narrator provides the story with a more human view of the events occurring. His personal account of these events, his realistic reactions to these events, and the emotion experienced and portrayed by him demonstrate how central this character is to the development and telling of the story.
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