Essay On Bartleby The Scrivener

Of the three interpretations presented, it is the first that I find to be the most relevant to “Bartleby the Scrivener”. It states “The story critiques dehumanizing, restrictive labor that crushes the spirit of employees who are used as tools in the production of wealth by obtuse, smug capitalists such as the narrator.” (Simpson) When analyzing “Bartleby the Scrivener” evidence of such an interpretation can be found throughout the reading, the goal of this paper, is to discuss a handful of such textual evidence.
The interpretation itself can be split into two parts, the first referring to the labor of the employees (being described as “spirit crushing”). And the second referring to the employers who rule over them, depicting them as “obtuse”
To the narrator, Bartleby is an enigma; so different from himself that he cannot even begin to try and understand his view of the world he lives in. Such lack of understanding is evident in the scene depicting the narrator as he discovers that even after being fired and instructed to leave, Bartleby has remained at the office. It reads “to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there anything further that I could assume in the matter?” In this scene the narrator is torn between using force to remove Bartleby, and remaining at arm’s length of from any form of confrontation.
Such depictions of the destructive force are evident throughout Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” further promoting the interpretation depicting the wealth and powerful as shortsighted, profit-mongering, cowards who praise the dollar above their fellow