40 pages • 1 hour read
Bartleby, the Scrivener
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Literary Devices
Point of View
Point of view is the perspective from which a story is narrated. Melville chose to narrate “Bartleby” in the first-person limited perspective, with a narrator who is a character within the story: Bartleby’s employer. Readers are limited to the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and the events he chooses to convey.
Readers know nothing about the workers in the office except what the narrator knows and chooses to tell us. He focuses on the eccentricities that affect how well or poorly they perform their jobs. Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby are often admonished for their oddities and praised for the qualities that make them useful to the narrator. The employees are presented mainly from the perspective of their usefulness to the business goals of the lawyer.
Contrast for Emphasis
Melville relies greatly on contrasting opposing concepts to convey meaning in “Bartleby.” The “dead brick wall” is contrasted with the nature that was once there. Wall Street’s bustling and energetic nature by day is contrasted with its ruined, ghost-town nature by night.
Melville relies on descriptive, vivid language to emphasize the difference between the two contrasted images. He uses this device to starkly represent images and ideas. Bartleby’s daydreaming would be far less unusual and concerning if he did it at his desk instead of while staring at a brick wall, a symbol of the bleakness of Wall Street. The shock of the description of the office would be less jarring if it were not stated that the lawyer prefers “snug” business places. Melville’s symbols and motifs are given more weight by frequent and vivid contrast.
Flat Characters
Flat characters are defined by a small number of vivid traits that typically do not change through the story. These characters are predictable and usually represent a type as opposed to being fully-fledged humans. The office employees are excellent examples of flat characters.
The flat characters in “Bartleby” emphasize the absurd elements of the story. Flat characters rarely behave like rational people, and they fit well with the theory of determinism. If humans do not have free will, a flat character who always behaves in expected ways expresses determinism more clearly than a round character. Whether a character is flat or round depends in part on the narrator. In this case, the lawyer sees his employees as one-dimensional. Furthermore, a first-person limited point of view can show the inner life of only a single character.
Setting
Most of “Bartleby” takes place in the office of the elderly lawyer. Readers are introduced to it as a “snug retreat” where the lawyer may do “snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds” (3) Readers are given the expectation that this setting is warm, welcoming, and “snug.” As the lawyer continues to describe the office, however, this expectation is not met. The chambers look onto an internal sky-light shaft of the office building on one end and, on the other, the “lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade” (4). He likens the space between his office window and this brick wall to a “huge square cistern” (4), using the image of a dark and dank underground tank. This setting that readers expect to be snug and warm turns out to be lifeless and dreary.
Melville highlights the setting through contrast—between day and night, and between the natural and artificial. Melville’s presentation of the setting relies on a complex interweaving of literary devices to show us an environment that is snug to some but desolate and depressing to others depending on their socioeconomic status.
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By Herman Melville
