The Lure of Blankness in Bartleby the Scrivener
Bartleby, The Narrator, and Critical Responses
The narrator of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” recounts his experience with Bartleby, a former employee who remains a fascinating enigma. Bartleby answers most requests by repeating that he “would prefer not to,” soon demonstrating that he has no preferences, only an unswerving devotion to inaction.
He often stares at walls, both while employed by the narrator and after being taken to prison for refusing to leave the narrator’s office.
Bartleby’s Blankness
Bartleby initially appears to be a normal and industrious employee. Then one day he declines to help examine copies, politely stating that he “would prefer not to”. Bartleby gradually refuses to perform more and more of his duties in the office, and instead spends the majority of his time staring at its walls, in what the narrator terms “dead-wall reveries” (78).
One weekend the narrator stops by the office and is startled to discover that Bartleby lives in the office. Eventually Bartleby declines to work at all, then declines to leave the premises, each time blankly repeating that he “would prefer not to”. He eventually is taken to prison, where he stares at more walls and soon dies, evidently because he preferred not to eat.
It is never explained why Bartleby refuses to perform the duties of a job he applied for, or why he constantly stares at walls. Perhaps he is actually thinking deeply and vividly, and only appears to be vacantly staring.
It is possible he sees something in walls that the rest of us do not. For example, perhaps he is obsessed with walls because he views them as a symbol of a psychological or personal barrier. Or maybe his “dead-wall reveries” are a deliberate choice to view emptiness, to seek blankness or purity as an ideal.
Narratorial Blankness
The narrator has known many scriveners in his life, but none as unusual as Bartleby; he claims he would “waive the biographies of all other scriveners, for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of” (59).
The narrator is fascinated by Bartleby because he cannot understand him. He “believe[s] that no materials exist, for a full and satisfactory biography of this man” (59), yet he continues searching for explanations for Bartleby’s actions. However, in life and in death, Bartleby remains just as inscrutable and blank as the walls at which he stared, both in action and appearance.
Bartleby never reveals any information about himself while he is alive, and the narrator is unable to find any answers after his death. Yet although the narrator’s interest may seem futile, he remains fascinated by his experience with Bartleby.
In this way Bartleby can be understood as a wall, as impassive blankness, and it is as if the narrator, in ceaselessly examining the fragments he has witnessed of Bartleby’s life, is also staring at blank and empty walls.
However, as with the walls he stared at, it is possible that a deeper meaning or underlying logic exists to the inscrutable enigma of Bartleby.
Reader/Critic Blankness
The reader, too, is fascinated by Bartleby, and critics have long been compelled to propose explanations for his unusual behavior. However, these explanations have established few conclusions.
For example, as Gordon E. Bigelow notes, critics have interpreted the story in countless ways, including as a parable of the thwarted artist, a study in abnormal psychology, a social satire, “theologically, as a parable of free will, moral responsibility, and judgment”, and “existentially, stressing Bartleby’s Kafkaesque alienation in an absurd universe” (345).
Can such incongruent and contradictory interpretations all prove valid? Bigelow argues that, indeed, “most, including those that are mutually contradictory, seem to have some validity” (346).
Why are there so many widely divergent explanations? Does the story contain a kind of universal appeal, so that many people can relate to it? Or is the story too vague and unformed, so that it can be completed by several different explanations? And what is it about Bartleby that compels us to explain his behavior?
Perhaps the compulsion to interpret and the myriad of interpretations both stem from the blankness of the story: it is left unexplained, and its pristine inscrutability lures us and drives the reader to assign meaning.
Lure of Blankness
What is the lure of blankness? Is it the promise or hope of some hidden meaning that is attractive? Is there something irresistible about purity? Or does blankness represent infinite potential, as white is the sum of all colors, and as a blank canvas could be seen as containing every possible work of art?
Bartleby is intriguing to the narrator because his behavior seems to defy all explanation, although the narrator eventually ascribes it to his previous employment by the dead-letter office. Something about blankness fascinates readers and critics too, as evidenced by the countless analyses of Bartleby.
Despite the array of explanations, then, all analysis ultimately falls short; Bartleby is a character who cannot be entirely grasped, whose story which remains fluid and constantly recreated through the shifting lens of the reader.
Works Cited
Bigelow, Gordon E. “The Problem of Symbolist Form in Melville’s ‘Bartleby the
Scrivener’.” Modern Language Quarterly, 31:3 (1970): 345-358.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor & Other Stories. Ed. Harold Beaver. New York:
Penguin Books, 1967.
Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener
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The Blankness of Bartleby Is Captivating
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