Isolation and the Unreliability of Language Theme Analysis

From its very first sentence, Melville signals to the reader that Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story in which language isn’t always meant to be taken at face value. The Lawyer, who narrates the entire story, describes himself in the first line as “a rather elderly man.” Presumably, The Lawyer knows his own age, but instead of passing that information along to the reader he chooses to describe himself as elderly—but he doesn’t just leave it at that, he calls himself “rather elderly.” It’s the “rather” that makes this opening sentence as nonspecific as it is. It is entirely unclear without context what “rather elderly” means—is The Lawyer a middle-aged man who is being modest? A man near the very end of his life trying to be humble? Or is he simply a man in the midst of old age, not quite at the end, but further from his first breath than his last? The reader cannot know for certain the answer to any of these questions that the first sentence raises, because Bartleby, the Scrivener is told from the perspective of an unreliable—and often unspecific—narrator. For example, The Lawyer never tells the reader his own name, and only refers to his employees other than Bartleby by their nicknames: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. So, the point-of-view of the story is in itself an example of language failing to create a perfect two-way relationship between storyteller and listener, between reader and writer.

This point is exemplified by the story’s end. In the midst of the climactic sequence, The Lawyer abruptly stops telling the story of Bartleby’s passive resistance, which at this point is leading the scrivener to waste away in prison because he refuses to eat any food, and instead The Lawyer says that “imagination” on the part of the reader should be good enough to envision Bartleby’s end. The Lawyer then states that what is to be told next should be questioned by the reader, as The Lawyer has heard it through rumor only, and he goes on to say that those rumors indicate that before Bartleby began working at The Lawyer’s office, he had spent a number of years working at the Dead Letter Office. This means that Bartleby spent his life destroying lost letters, letters that were meant to connect two people through shared language but failed at that task. The story implies, then, that when he’d had too much of the dead letter office, Bartleby came to work at The Lawyer’s office to try the exact opposite—as a scrivener, Bartleby copied letters. But, as the story shows, that, too, didn’t fulfill the kind of communication Bartleby was seeking, perhaps because language is an inherently imperfect or incomplete communicative tool.

Bartleby’s interactions with The Lawyer are full of failed communication. The Lawyer speaks with Bartleby to try to find out about Bartleby’s family and history, but Bartleby brushes him off with his usual “I would prefer not to,” excuse. Later, when The Lawyer is adamant that he must fire Bartleby and find a family member to whom he can pawn off the responsibility of caring for Bartleby, The Lawyer finally pleads with Bartleby to be “a little reasonable.” Bartleby replies that he “…would prefer not to be a little reasonable.” Reason uses language as its mode of communication, and, like two negotiators who speak different languages, The Lawyer is entirely unable to understand anything about Bartleby by talking with him because Bartleby refuses to engage with him on common logical ground.

One might then argue that all that is necessary for true communication or connection is active engagement from both sides, but the story, at least as Bartleby sees things, seems to take a darker view. Bartleby seems to have come to the conclusion that even if people do engage they still won’t be able to communicate, and so he prefers not even to try, and then, ultimately, not even to live. In Bartleby’s view, then, every person is like a dead letter, with information to share, but no one with whom to share it. And, of course, the fact that The Lawyer isn’t even sure that Bartleby even ever worked in the Dead Letter Office only further supports this idea, as even the dark interpretation of Bartleby’s life is made hazy and uncertain—even Bartleby’s message of the meaninglessness of attempts at connection might itself be meaningless.