--No, watching the Crispin Glover starring version of the movie won't help you much for class discussion, but it suggests contemporary relevance.
--What sort of image of the city is offered here? Compare to the depictions of the city offered by the other authors we've read in this section of the term.
--"Bartleby" is a story of the city and represents, to a certain extent, the attempt of a person of the upper middle class (the lawyer) to understand and 'help' a person of the lower class (Bartleby). Compare the lawyer and his thinking about Bartleby to the thinking others we've read (Child, Fuller, Boucicoult, Poe) have given to the problem of understanding the "other" (mostly poor) in the city.
--This is also a story about management, that immaterial labor of making sure that others work productively and happily that has come to define middle class experience (if you don't make or sell something, you make sure that others make or sell something). Consider what the story has to say about management. Compare it to working experiences you've had either as a manager or being managed and to contemporary depictions/satires of this work dynamic ("The Office" comes to mind, but others as well).
Melville’s narrator in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” shows the city as constraining, tightly packed, and congested. He explains that the view from his office has a, “White wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft...This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call ‘life,’” while the other end offered, “An unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade...was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.” The city does not offer much to look at, and once he gets onto the street there is little wandering through the city as described in “Wakefield” and “The Man of the Street,” as these characters become lost in their own view of the city. Melville’s narrator sticks to his comfort zone around Wall Street and his office, at one point going to a church near his office, keeping the narrator restricted to a rather small area in the big city. This compares to Dupin’s view of the city in “The Murder of Marie Roget.” He opines that straying out of this comfort zone will allow one to get lost in the city. For example, had Marie traveled her typical route to places she is known, she would have been noticed, yet, she chose a different path to avoid being seen, thus getting lost in the city. The old man from “The Man of the Crowd” uses the whole city as his playground, or comfort zone, while Wakefield does not realize that he has ventured so far out of his neighborhood that no one will notice him.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator of “Bartleby” wanders to the suburbs, attempting to find an escape. It is a place that he goes to hide from the landlord of his old office where Bartleby remained, explaining, “For a few days I drove about the upper part of the town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway, crossed over to Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria.” This brief glimpse of the outlying areas allows the narrator to escape from the comforts, and turmoil, of the city. In comparison, Dupin explains this as a place that people go, only to return to the city and resume their normal lives. Melville’s narrator eventually returns to his life in the city, only to confront the Bartleby problem again.
In “Bartleby,” the city is a physical place of comfort for the narrator, albeit constraining and lacking in charm at times. But, it is also a place where he confronts the volatile personalities (i.e. Nippers and Turkey) and stubbornness (i.e. Bartleby) of the rest of society while trying to find a balance that will keep everyone motivated and working toward a common goal. Therefore, it makes the city a place of constant pragmatism when one is not part of a ‘crowd’ or attempting to ‘escape.’
The Narrator seems to be both concerned, and frustrated with Bartleby, though these emotions do not take place simultaneously. When the lawyer has been irritated to his utmost, he uses the others in his office to calm him down. This exclusive emotional duality also plays out in the two employees Turkey and Nippers, who the narrator uses as a sounding board to mediate his own irritated state. Turkey, who is only productive in the morning, and Nippers, who is only productive in the evening, allows the narrator to see the flaws in making managerial decisions at either the height or trough of emotional stimulation. While these idiosyncrasies are seemingly less human due to their predictable/cyclical nature, this doesn’t really strike me as social class commentary. The narrator seems to be subject to the same sorts of emotional ups and downs as his presumably lower class employees. The main difference is that his ups and downs have an obvious cause, Bartleby’s “preferences”.
ReplyDeleteAnother contemporary office-work satire, that explores the same sorts of issues as “Bartleby” is the Mike Judge’s movie/cartoon “Office Space” (Milton). There are some pretty major differences in these two stories though. “Bartleby” is the manager’s story. In this narrative he (the manager) is the central character whose problems the reader is most likely to empathize with. Often times the employees in his office appear to be caricatures that make up his labor force. Mostly they represent a collection of problems to endure for the sake of business. “Office Space” takes the other point of view, that of the worker. Mike Judge turns his worker(s) into an anti-hero and in the process makes the corporate entity look oppressive. The same shallow character development is used, but in this case it is applied to “Lumburg” the “unholy pig of a boss” who is about as one dimensional as characters come. He is ONLY a boss, the avatar of corporate oppression. Also, the crimes committed are drastically different. Bartleby is a threat to the institution which he is a part of with his unproductive presence, where as the workers in “Office Space” actually steal money from the company from which they work for. Perhaps the most important similarities/differences between the two are the presentation of the power structures in place. While both “Bartleby” and “Office Space” shows a power struggle between workers and management, the results of these struggles are quite divergent. Bartleby’s repudiation of the social hierarchy in his office has catastrophic effects on his life. Conversely, the workers in “Office Space” seem to be unable to make any sort of change to their work/social/home situation regardless of the actions they take against their company. While both works seems to show problems in the supervisor’s role in hierarchal systems of collecting revenue, “Bartleby” seems to be defending the system based on an individual’s maladaption (even offering solutions at management’s expense) where “Office Space” is assuming the audience already has contempt for the entities being lampooned.
#4 (and #0) Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" certainly has contemporary echoes.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to compare it, not to a tv show (I never watch tv) but to a 1957 play we're currently studying in my hispanic literature class. Osvaldo Dragún's "The Man who became a Dog" deals with the same issues of personal integrity and dehumanization.
In Dragún's play, a poor man travels throughout his city in search of a job. No one is hiring, but because the man is so persistent, one employer finally hires him as a replacement for the night watchman's dog, who recently died. In return for walking on all fours and barking when anyone enters, the poor man receives food and lodging, plus ten pesos a day, which is ten pesos more than the dog ever earned, so his new boss calls it a raise.
Being hired to do what a dog could do at least equally well is probably one of the most degrading work situations imaginable. Similarly, the banality of the tasks Bartleby and the others are assigned to do show the worthlessness of humanity in a scrivener's situation; at first, when Bartleby is still copying documents by hand, the narrator finds his mechanical productivity unnerving. Yet mechanized efficiency is exactly the force necessary in such a setting, as seen from the fact that offices now use copy machines instead of employing people to take longer, require wages, and do a less accurate job.
At first, Bartleby makes no objection to copying legal documents--that is, after all, what he's getting paid to do. The man being paid to be a dog takes it in stride as well, praising his own adaptability. In both cases, what personal life the characters formerly had--we know nothing of Bartleby's--cannot be sustained alongside the new job, and we see them transformed, one man into a dog (at last, even the veterinarian confirms it is true, however much he may outwardly appear to be a man), and one into a ghost.
Bartleby's continuing "I'd prefer not to" is in many ways a voice of sanity. No worker would need management if he preferred to occupy himself with the tasks his employer wanted him to do. Nippers laughs at Bartleby's preference not to do the tasks he himself does everyday, not because he wouldn't also prefer not to carry out the tasks, but because he knows it isn't a matter of preference. Turkey's viewpoint is slightly different--he would rather carry out a scrivener's tasks than take the afternoon off, even when it's offered to him, because he is growing old and would view that as accepting defeat. In this small way, at least, even banal tasks can be more fulfilling than nothing, yet Bartleby chooses nothingness, alienation, and even death over acting against his own personal preference. The watchman's dog simply becomes what's expected of him. In Bartleby's refusal to do the same, he loses hold of life.
I tried this once and lost everything...let's try it again.
ReplyDeleteI read Bartelby in high school and really enjoyed it, so I was excited to revisit it with this class. I particularly enjoy the relationship between Bartelby and the narrator. Bartebly is hired to help the narrator with simply, monotonous tasks. However, whenever he is asked to do anything, he replies, "I prefer not to." The narrator, although frustrated, is does not get angry and fire Bartelby. As he explains, "had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner, in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises." However, struck by Bartelby's politeness and matter-of-factness, the narrator decides to reason with him.
This reminds me exactly of a little boy I used to teach swim lessons. The boy was about seven or eight and absolutely hated to put his face in the water, let alone fully submerge himself. Whenever I asked him to, he would say "no thank you, I like to do that." Had he simply said no and pouted or cried, it would have been a lot easier to get frustrated with him. However, his politeness was so surprising, especially for a child of his age, I could not get angry with him. Instead, I made a game out of it. I would ask him to put his forehead, ear, nose and chin in the water until eventually he had put virtually his whole face in the water. Eventually he would do it without protest.
-Emily David