But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. Although the lawyer’s position in the market economy pushes him to dismiss Bartleby for occupying his chambers and denying his authority, his Christian principles make him reason with Bartleby, and, in an attempt to prove to himself that he still has humanity, he looks for alternative solutions. However, Bartleby’s behavior creates a dead-end for the lawyer. The chambers give us a clue about the mentality of the lawyer who stays on the surface of things and sacrifices the good working conditions of himself and his employees in order to stay closer to Wall-Street. The lawyer’s office is in Wall Street, the American exchange stock market and the place of the individual in American Society. He is a man who does not really want to struggle in his life, so he never addresses a jury or draws down public applause, as he admits: “I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best” (Melville, 2364). This society creates a hierarchy, where American elitism is differentiated from working class people, who struggle 15 hours per day to earn their living.Īs far as the lawyer is concerned, his identity is separable from his business as a servicer of the rich. America of the north is turned into an urban society, which, apart from the increase in the population, creates new working conditions.
Through the individual dead-ends of the five protagonists, we are going to throw light on the bleak picture of the American society of the 19th century.ĭuring the industrial revolution, the socio-economic and cultural conditions are profoundly affected. The fact that the protagonists, both the scriveners and the narrator, are “divided”, mentally and physically, by the socio-economic circumstances, gives us a clue about the mentality of the market economy in the American Society. Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street” is a dark romanticism story, the aim of which is to disrupt the myth of the American dream of success, and bring to the surface the fragmentation of the individual and the society. The reality behind the myth of the American dream of success