Pelini 1

The Problem of Narration in Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener

There are as many interpretations of Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener as
there are critics; readers simply cannot agree on what this seemingly straightforward story
means. What complicates criticism of Bartleby is the lawyers narration: Bartleby is a
fictional, first-person narration, so if we contend we know anything of Bartleby, it is only what
the narrator knows of Bartleby (Davis 184). Before we interpret the story of the character
Bartleby, then, we must first appraise its narration. This is the point at which Melville scholars
are divided: How reliable is the lawyer-narrator? Quite simply, we cannot answer this question
with certainty because Melville does not tell us how to perceive his narrator. In this essay,
therefore, I shall not argue the inherent superiority of any one reading. I shall instead present
three distinct approaches to Bartleby and their implications, with a particular emphasis on the
reading that I believe holds the most interesting interpretative significance for readers.
To understand the first interpretation I wish to explore, a review of contemporary
biographical methodology might prove useful. For our purposes, I shall turn to Hershel Parkers
Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative, the companion text to his sketch of our own storys
author. In it, Parker discusses modern biographys footsteps theory (7), a highly regarded
approach to biography which some argue has created the most sustained pitch of biographical
excellence yet enjoyed (Kendall 153). According to this theory, the biographer simulates the
subjects life to open himself to all that places and things will tell him, in his struggle to
visualize, and to sense, his man in being (151). As the biographer details this simulation, he
fosters a transparency within his text, thereby lending the narrative credibility: Was I able to
fake what I did not see? Parker asks readers (13). Moreover, retracing his subjects steps
enables the biographer to empathize with not only the subject but also the personin Parkers

Pelini 2
case, Melville the man (18). Empathy consequently reduces the risk that the biography might
become more about the narrator than the subject: biography and autobiography are one.
The lawyers biographical approach is at the center of the most common (and in terms of
scholarship, most prolific) reading of Bartleby: If the lawyer claims to write a biography
indeed, he tells us, I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life
of Bartleby (Melville 4)we must read it as one. When we do, most critics argue, we find the
lawyers narration is unreliable. Many methodological problems exist within the text (curiously
ironic, since the lawyer boasts his two grand point[s] to be method and prudence (4)). One
critic notes, for example, that [a]ll actions, all dialogue, all statements, all interpretations come
to the reader through the report of the lawyer (Davis 184). To accept the lawyers
uncorroborated narrative at surface value, therefore, readers must place unbridled confidence in
him. This would not be problematic if, like Parker, the lawyer were a transparent biographer;
however, he purposely masks his original sources (Melville 4). From his employees Turkey,
Nippers, and Ginger Nut (5); to the location of his office at No.Wall-street (5); to his
acquaintances, such as the generic lawyer (28); to even his own identitythe narrator leaves
skeptical readers to wonder why he consistently cloaks narrative elements in epithets.
Critics cite these problems to dispute whether we might even trust that the narrative is, in
fact, a biography. Footsteps theory minimizes the danger that biography becomes too
autobiographical; in the narrators method, this line often is blurred. Dan McCall points to two
passages most frequently cited as evidence that the narrator tells us more about himself than
Bartleby (124, 125). First, before introducing Bartleby, the lawyer details my employes, my
business, my chambers, and general surroundings (Melville 4). Readers should ask themselves,
however, why Nipperss irritable, brandy-like disposition (6), Turkeys afternoon blunders

Pelini 3
and flurried rashness (7), and even details of the lawyers own snug business (4) belong in
Bartlebys biography. The second passage is the lawyers response to Bartlebys noncompliance
with his requests: Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval, he realizes. To . . .
humor [Bartleby] in his strange willfulness will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my
soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience (14). Here the lawyers
solipsistic, epiphanous tone is evident; throughout the biography, Bartleby exists only as a
secondary character, important in so much as he affects the narrator.
But if the narrative is not a biography of Bartleby, then what exactly is he telling us? H.
Bruce Franklins assessment typifies the approach taken by many critics who share this mindset:
To read Bartleby well, we must first realize that we can never know who or what Bartleby is,
but that we are continually asked to guess who or what he might be (126). There is thus a
deeper significance in Bartleby, even if it is not biographical. Consequently, Bartleby becomes a
purely symbolic character in a symbolic narrative that can beand has beenread as about
almost anything. Indeed, critics have found the narrators meaning in everything from religious
passive resistance (Desmarais) to consumer capitalism (Wilson).
Most critics lean toward this symbolic reading, but others are less skeptical of the
narration. The second approach I shall briefly discuss argues that the lawyers narration is too
honest to be distrusted. In his introduction, for example, he contrasts himself with his
proverbially energetic and nervous attorney-colleagues, volunteering that he is an eminently
safe man who believes the easiest way of life is best (4). As a boss, he is equally inept. Not
only are Nippers and Turkey unproductive and insubordinate, but they keep his errand boy,
Ginger Nut, busy as their cake and apple purveyor, so that the narrator alone does work in the
office (7, 9). Certainly, the narrator does not hide his shortcomings, which are not only

Pelini 4
professional. The lawyer banishes Bartleby from the office even though the scrivener is
otherwise homeless (25); relocates the business when Bartleby refuses to leave, foreseeing the
legal consequences for him (28); then allows the scrivener to starve in prison as a result (33)
the lawyer enumerates the ways in which he clearly fails Bartleby.
But McCall argues that the lawyer is intelligent . . . and thoroughly competent (102);
indeed, to me his historical allusions to Petra (Melville 17) and Egyptian architectural style (33),
as well as the Bible (25, 33) do support the argument that at the very least he is well read and, in
McCalls words, self-aware (102). If the narrative is unreliablein some sense, that is,
intended to deceivewould he not show himself in a better light?
I shall not suggest that this reading is wrong, but I believe it is the weakest of those
presented in this essay for two reasons. First, its interested lay less in arguing for the best
analysis than against certain scholarly trends. Dan McCall, perhaps the most prominent of such
critics, dismantles scholarship that presumes [f]iction told in the first person is inherently
deceptive and criticizes the resulting symbolic interpretations as obtuse paraphrase (106,
108). But his argument that readers should trust the narrator largely is, Why not? Second, this
approach holds the least interpretive significance for readers. What do we learn from a story
about the brief interactions between a former Wall Street attorney and a forlorn scrivener who
prefers not to do much of anything and dies in prison without revealing the motives behind his
passive resistance? McCall concludes that the lawyer tells readers of the transformative powers
of grief (154), but this suggestion leaves us where we began: we might know the lawyers
message, but what is Melvilles?
Here readers may wish to object that the authors and narrators purposes are equivalent.
If so, however, why does Melville construct a first-person persona; why not employ free indirect

Pelini 5
discourse or write a satire? Indeed, a fictional, first-person narration, enables the author to
divorce his meaning from that of the narrator: [W]hen a story is told in the first person, the
narrator is equal to any other character belonging to the realm of ordinary mortals (Gowiski
104). Like any human biographer, then, the lawyer might possess an absolute knowledge of its
subject, but reveals it step by step, not right away (105); consequently, he can manipulate it to
either inform or misinform the reader (104). This concept of the first-person narrators fallibility
drives the final approach I shall survey: The lawyer begins credibly, but his reliability diminishes
throughout his narrative.
As McCall notes, when the narrative begins, the lawyer volunteers his workplace failings,
and he also proffers personal opinions for readers: I seldom lose my temper . . . but I must be
permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the
office of Master in Chancery . . . as apremature act, he tells us (5). To me, his honesty,
coupled with the abrupt pause preceding premature, suggests that the lawyer is candid and
vivid, not like one consciously deceiving readers; he seems almost to write as he thinks. Even
after he introduces Bartleby, he guiltlessly details the scriveners welcome to the office. The
lawyer raises a cubicle to entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from
my voice (10). In an office already deficient in what landscape painters call life, Bartlebys
only additional view is of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade (5, 10). The
narrator seems unaware that in walling off the scrivener, he also rhetorically alienates readers.
Not until the first instance of Bartlebys passive resistance does the lawyer begin to show
awareness. He weighs the consequences of various responses to Bartlebys insubordination, If I
turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he
will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve (13). As previously noted,

Pelini 6
exactly this happens: Bartleby eventually is arrested as a trespasser and starves in the Tombs.
Readers should note, however, that what immediately follows is the narrators decision to
humor Bartleby so as to cheaply purchase . . . a sweet morsel for my conscience. The
narrator foresees the consequences for Bartleby, vows preventative action, butperhaps because
all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running
around (27)allows the scrivener to die regardless. To me, the juxtaposition of these passages
is pivotal because it betrays authorial cognizance: He realizes where this leaves his conscience.
Although the lawyer failed to ease his conscience during Bartlebys life, then, he might
resurrect it in what remains of the scriveners biography. Indeed, a seemingly penitent tone
pervades the remainder of the story: He states when he finds Bartleby lives at the office that a
feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me . . . The bond of a common humanity
now drew me irresistibly to gloom (17); suddenly, he empathizes greatly with Bartleby. Later,
when contemplating whether to move his office, he deliberates, What shall I do? what ought I to
do? what does conscience say I should do with this man (27).
Readers may posit that these contemplations, as well as his mournful tone, are genuine,
but I suggest they are not. First, the narrative preceding the pivotal passages is incongruous with
that which succeeds them. Not only does lawyers late altruism contradict the earlier narrative
which victimizes him as browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way
by Bartlebys resistance (12), but his tone becomes gradually muted, a stark contrast to the
lawyers earlier roar[s] (15). Second, following the pivotal passages, the scrivener becomes a
ghost (15), apparition (16), and wight (17); he is cadaverous (20) and haunts the narrator
with his dead-wall revery (21). By dehumanizing the scrivener to readers, the narrator softens
the seriousness of his neglect and, therefore, his culpability in Bartlebys demise. Finally, the

Pelini 7
biographys conclusion deflects guilt to others: [L]et me say, that if this little narrative has
sufficiently interested [the reader] . . . as to who Bartleby was, he begins, implicating readers
who, like him, have been more concerned with the lawyers rather than Bartlebys suffering in
the biography (34). He calculates the narrative more purposefully than readers might believe:
What he says sounds objective and apologetic, but he shows more concern for distracting readers
from his guilt, or justifying his neglect of Bartleby, than repenting wrongdoings.
What did Melville intend by constructing a fictional narrator with these motives? In his
1982 piece Melvilles Withdrawal, John Updike writes, Melville . . . began, in his midtwenties, with a success that ever he had to live up to (126). His first two novels, Typee and
Omoo, were indeed critical and commercial successes, but by 1852 Pierre (his last novel before
the publication of Bartleby) sold only a miserable 283 out of a projected 2,310 copies (128).
We can adopt either of the first two approaches and interpret Bartleby according to an
enigmatic scrivener or a fictional narrator. Or we can ask ourselves, as does the third reading,
what it says about authorship. The bleakness that overshadows his story reflects the somberness
of his career, a time at which he struggled to support a family with an increasingly willful pen
(130). But as the literary public declined, what he hoped to tell the public, like the narrators
motivations, was maturing and progressing. What Bartleby says is infinitely open, perhaps
even symbolic; what it illustrates is a sort of coming-of-ageMelvilles own authorial evolution.

Works Cited
Davis, Todd F. "The Narrator's Dilemma in Bartleby the Scrivener: The Excellently Illustrated
Re-statement of a Problem." Studies in Short Fiction 34 (1997): 183-92. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.

Pelini 8
Desmarais, Jane. "Preferring Not To: The Paradox of Passive Resistance in Herman Melville's
Bartleby." Journal of the Short Story in English 36 (2001): 25-39. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
Franklin, H. B. Worldly Safety and Other-Worldly Saviors. The Wake of the Gods: Melville's
Mythology. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1963. 126-52. Print.
Gowiski, Micha, and Rochelle Stone. "On the First-Person Novel." New Literary History 9.1
(1977): 103-14. JSTOR. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.
Kendall, Paul M. Contemporary Biography. The Art of Biography. New York: Norton, 1965.
113-53. Print.
McCall, Dan. The Reliable Narrator. The Silence of Bartleby. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1989.
99-154. Print.
Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Ed. Dan McCall. Melville's Short Novels:
Authoritative Texts, Contexts, and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2002. 3-34. Print.
Parker, Hershel. Melville and the Footsteps Theory of Biography. Melville Biography: An
Inside Narrative. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2012. 7-18. Print.
Updike, John. "Reflections: Melville's Withdrawal. New Yorker 10 May 1982: 120+. The New
Yorker Archives. The New Yorker. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Wilson, James C. "'Bartleby': The Walls of Wall Street." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of
American Literature, Culture, and Theory 37.4 (1981): 335-46.