[In the following essay, Emery explores themes of freedom and limitation in "Bartleby," particularly emphasizing the doctrines of Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Priestly.]

In recent years Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" has attracted its share of critics, many of whom have rightly proclaimed the tale to be an ingenious treatment of the theme of freedom and limitation. Nevertheless, two questions of preëminent importance remain unanswered: What is the precise nature of Bartleby's revolt? And how ought we to characterize the narrator's response to his mysterious clerk?

It seems to me that we can most easily answer these questions if we approach Melville's tale contextually. The Herman Melville of 1853 was, after all, hardly an illiterate sailor; and no small portion of his knowledge of philosophy, theology, and literature appears to have gone into the making of "Bartleby." If we disregard this knowledge and slight the tale's intellectual roots, we shall inevitably miss much of the author's meaning; in fact, however diligently we may examine the story's surface, we shall continue, I think, to muddle through "Bartleby" as readers and to lapse into an embarrassing vagueness as critics. To be sure, a handful of scholars have endeavored to explore the tale's context. Yet those who have investigated the philosophical backgrounds—those backgrounds to be treated here—have failed thus far to recognize the care with which Melville read his sources and the precision with which he used them in "Bartleby." To understand the contextual basis of Melville's tale is only to make a beginning: we must be prepared to devote a good deal of attention to what may at first seem thoroughly irrelevant and obscure materials if our scholarship is to aid us in interpreting "Bartleby." But happily the critical payoffs are there: a brief consideration of Melville's sources not only sheds immediate light on his creative intentions and enhances our enjoyment of his tale, but also enables us to recognize "Bartleby" for what it clearly is—one of the most impressive achievements in the history of short fiction.

Jonathan Edwards, Puritan minister and theologian, and Joseph Priestley, chemist and free-thinking Unitarian, had little in common, but they agreed, nevertheless, in assaulting the notion of man's "free will." Edwards' Freedom of the Will and Priestley's Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated argued, quite similarly in fact, that "free will," instead of being a concept readily understood and clearly exemplified by everyday human decision-making, was an absurd idea, impossible either to comprehend or define. One might briefly paraphrase the argument of the two philosophers this way. (1) For the will to be absolutely free would require its perfect isolation at any moment of decision—its separation from all such mental "determinants" as emotions, habits, dispositions, and general behavioral principles. Since these things are quite vulnerable to the influences of the physical body, external nature, and other people, they would, if allowed to affect decisions, make those decisions "determined"—caused by something outside the will. (2) But if the will were separated from the rest of the mind at all moments of decision, it would inevitably then be separated as well from the grounds upon which decisions ought to rest; thus if the will were indeed "self-determining," it would be given over, in effect, to a random, indeterminate, and essentially uncontrollable procedure.

Although the advocates of "free will" claimed to be espousing an intermediate position between the supposedly stifling "Determinism" and "Necessity" of Edwards and Priestley, on the one hand, and a chaotic indeterminism on the other, Edwards and Priestley insisted that no such position was possible. Either, they suggested, the will could be influenced by emotions, habits, and so on, in which case it was most certainly not "free," or else it could be influenced by nothing other than itself, in which case it was indeed "free," but only in the unpleasant sense of being a tiny nugget of indeterminate chance in the core of the mind. Edwards and Priestley insisted, in short, that the man without "free will" was the sort of man one saw everywhere; while the man with "free will" would have been for them "a creature that had no resemblance to the human race … a most bizarre and unaccountable being, a mere absurdity in nature."

The narrator of "Bartleby" is acquainted with the treatises of Edwards and Priestley. In fact, he "looks into" them at one point in the story and takes comfort in knowing that his difficulties with Bartleby have been "predestinated from eternity." Had the narrator looked into the treatises a little more closely, however, he would surely have discovered something else: he would have seen that in their energetic description of the absurdities of "free will," Edwards and Priestley were predicting the absurdities of precisely such a being as Bartleby. The reference to Edwards and Priestley is, as it turns out, a vital clue to the philosophical context within which Melville meant his tale to be read.

Bartleby, we recall, is a peculiarly enigmatic character. His past, if we disregard the "Dead Letter Office" rumor, is forever hidden; his emotions remain concealed; his general motivations go undivulged. Yet if we cannot uncover Bartleby's secrets, we can see, superficially at least, why he persists in being a mystery: when questioned by the narrator or when asked to perform some action Bartleby customarily responds simply with an expression of "preference," for which word, after referring to the opening of Edwards' treatise, we can legitimately substitute "will."

Bartleby is, in fact, an exceedingly willful individual; yet his powerful will seems completely inexpressive of the remainder of his mind. That he has memories, emotional responses, and general motivations is possible; but if so, we have no reason ever to believe that these influence his "preferences." Indeed, Bartleby seems to prefer a thing simply because he prefers it; his will, that is, seems "self-determined"; and hence he appears to be just that sort of incredible "creature" envisioned by Edwards and Priestley—a man whose will is free of the mental "determinants" which those philosophers insisted were a factor in the decision-making of every human being.

We recall that Melville's narrator has great problems in managing Bartleby and is forced to employ numerous arguments with him—arguments of custom, duty, "reasonableness," and legality, to name a few. But as the narrator laments at one point: "It seemed to me that, while I [was] addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did." Bartleby's reason appears then to acquiesce in the face of the narrator's arguments; yet strangely enough, his perverse "preferences" continue. This, however, ought not to surprise us. The "paramount consideration" which lies behind Bartleby's refusals is evidently, as suggested earlier, a desire, previously fixed upon, to free his will from everything external to it, including all other motivations, and including his reason. One can then convince Bartleby's reason and have no consequent effect upon his "preferences"; for in order to establish the freedom of his will, Bartleby must prefer not to be normal, dutiful, reasonable, law-abiding, and anything else that would require his will to knuckle under to some "determining" consideration. Indeed, one suspects that when Bartleby seems to disregard his self-interest in rejecting first the narrator's offers of assistance and later the grubman's "dinners," it is because not even a concern for his own welfare can be allowed to influence his will.

The narrator does have a problem on his hands, as the following conversation demonstrates:

"[Bartleby,] would you like to re-engage in copying
for some one?"

"No; I would prefer not to make any change."
"Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?"

"There is too much confinement about that. No, I would
not like a clerkship; but I am not particular."

"Too much confinement," I cried, "why you keep yourself
confined all the time!"

"I would prefer not to take a clerkship," he rejoined.…
"How would a bar-tender's business suit you?" …

"I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I
am not particular."

… "How, then, would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation—how would that suit you?"

"Not at all. It does not strike me that there is anything definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular."

The best gloss on this perplexing bit of dialogue seems to be the following passage from Edwards' treatise on the will:

Now the question is, whether ever the soul of man puts forth an act of Will, while it yet remains in a state of Liberty.… For how ridiculous would it be for any body to insist, that the soul chooses one thing before another, when at the very same instant it is perfectly indifferent with respect to each! This is the same thing as to say, the soul prefers one thing to another, at the very same time that it has no preference.

Edwards argued that if the definition of "free will" required the will to be isolated at the moment of decision, if it insisted, in other words, that the will be "indifferent" in that moment with respect to its alternative choices, then the definition was absurd—since an indifferent will could clearly never come to a decision. The "free" Bartleby, we notice, denies repeatedly his "particularity" of opinion, yet proves to be highly particular with respect to his occupational possibilities. He is simultaneously indifferent and not indifferent; and this paradox seems to result from the paradox inherent in "free will" (as Edwards and Priestley defined it): the decisions of the "free" will had to issue out of a state of perfect indecision. Thus in the conversation just cited, Bartleby may appear to exhibit reasons for his preferences, but these "reasons" are merely momentarily significant, at times contradictory, and certainly not expressive of any sort of general motivation or behavioral determinant. Despite his preferences, Bartleby's only "determination" is to remain "not particular"—for he must remain so in order to be "free."

There is more to be said, however, on the subject of Bartleby's intractability. Edwards and Priestley were aware of the objection most frequently urged against their "deterministic" psychological models—namely, that these models seemed to eliminate human moral responsibility. If all a man's actions were determined through the natural causal chains which Edwards and Priestley thought to be operating, then was it not improper, the proponents of "free will" asked, either to reward or punish a man for a decision in which he participated only as a causal link and not as a "free" initiator? Edwards and Priestley answered that only a determined act could properly be labeled "moral" or "immoral." They pointed out that it was man's long-standing custom to punish those who had evil motives, habits, and dispositions rather than those who for no apparent reason performed evil acts, which seemed to suggest that the common notion of morality was heavily dependent upon the idea of mental "determinants." Moreover, turning the logic of the free-willers upside down, Edwards and Priestley went on to insist that "free will," if it were achieved, would make its possessor morally irresponsible for his actions, since these would then be "decided upon" not by his whole mind but by chance.

Priestley treated the problem of moral responsibility by imagining that he were a father desirous of morally evaluating and educating two hypothetical sons. With the first, "son A," whose will was not "free," and who could thus be influenced in his behavior and decision-making by considerations of self-interest, affection for others, fear of punishment, and so on, Priestley had no problem; but with his second hypothetical child, equipped with "free will," there were difficulties:

In my son B I have to do with a creature of quite another make.… In all cases where the principle of freedom from the certain influence of motives takes place, it is exactly an equal chance whether.. my promises or threatenings, my rewards or punishments determine his actions or not. The self-determining power is … a thing with respect to which I can make no sort of calculation.… When I … praise my son A, [I] tell him [I] admire his excellent disposition, in consequence of which all good motives have a … never-failing influence upon his mind. his conduct is not directed by mere will.… Let us now suppose that B does the very same thing [as A]; but let it be fully understood, that the cause of his right determination was not any bias or disposition of mind in favour of virtue, or because a good motive influenced him to do it; but that his determination was produced by … a mere arbitrary pleasure, without any reason whatever … and I apprehend he would no more be thought a proper subject of praise … than the dice, which, by a fortunate throw, should give a man an estate. It is true that the action was right, but there was not the proper principle, and motive, which are the only just foundations of praise.

Priestley's situation becomes even more interesting, however, when both sons are guilty of misconduct. After having successfully disciplined "son A," Priestley notes:

If son B has acted the same part [as A], the language which I addressed to A will not apply to [B]. It is true that he has done what is wrong … but it was not from any bad disposition of mind.… No, his determination … was a choice directed by no bad motive whatever, but a mere will.… My blame or reproaches, therefore, being ill founded, and incapable of having any effect, it is my wisdom to withhold them, and wait the uncertain issue with patience.

Bartleby is quite clearly, I think, a version of "son B." We remember that his ability to perform his duties varies remarkably. Upon entering the office, he works furiously, although "silently, palely, mechanically." The narrator remarks that he would have been "delighted" with Bartleby had the latter's dedication been the behavioral expression of a cheery or industrious disposition; but Bartleby simply works on, giving no evidence of any disposition at all. Then he begins to "prefer not," augmenting his refusals little by little, until finally he stops work altogether. But just as the narrator had previously found it strangely difficult to praise the eminently busy, but oddly unmotivated Bartleby, so he now finds it hard to punish him:

I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. 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. But as it was.. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought 1. What had one best do?

The narrator's predicament is precisely that of Priestley in the face of the contrariness of "son B"; for neither Bartleby's initial good behavior nor his later recalcitrance appears to originate in any motive or disposition (other than, as we have come to suspect, the "disposition" to be "unmotivated"). Like Priestley, the narrator finds it both oddly improper and decidedly ineffectual to reward or punish his employee; like Priestley, he can do nothing but postpone a decision on the matter and patiently "wait the uncertain issue."

The narrator might recall, by the way, that he did not have such difficulties with his three original employees—Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut—whose most essential characteristic is their clear difference from Bartleby with respect to will. Turkey, who regularly becomes irascible in the afternoon, Nippers, whose unfortunate mornings the narrator attributes to a combination of "ambition and indigestion," and Ginger Nut, a boy remarkable only for his craving for nuts, are clear examples of what Priestley would have called "type-A" humanity; for their behavior is noted for its great dependence on disposition. These are human beings whose physical bodies, for instance, frequently influence their wills, whereas Bartleby's body has no known effect upon his "preferences." Like Priestley's "son A" the three perform predictably, so predictably that although their performance may at times fail to measure up to the standards set by their employer, the latter, confident in the consistency of their behavior, can discipline them amiably and effectively. [In his "Melville's 'Bartleby': Absolutism, Predestination, and Free Will,] Richard Harter Fogle is quite right then: the three do seem reminiscent of Dickensian "humors characters"—but only because Melville intended their wills to be clearly determined by dispositions, habits, and, if you like, "humors," and not by the self-determinative process we see at work in the case of Bartleby's paradoxical will.

Both Bartleby's eccentricity and his unmanageability then can be traced to his "free" will; but certain questions remain. If Bartleby has "free will" and Edwards and Priestley insisted that it could not exist, then why does Bartleby? Is Melville's tale merely the surrealistic dramatization of an incoherent philosophical postulate? The answer is clearly "No." Although Bartleby himself is absurd, just as Edwards and Priestley predicted, his desire is, after all, simply to maximize his freedom of mind; and thus he can be interpreted as the surrealistic representative of a great number of quite real rebels. Indeed, Melville seems to have meant the psychological cul-de-sac into which Bartleby strays to exemplify the ineffectual and distinctly risky nature of all intellectual rebellion.

For what does Bartleby's ill-fated career teach us? It suggests that the rebel who seeks to achieve a greater freedom of mind is, in effect, imposing upon himself a kind of mental paralysis; for in disengaging his will from even one of the emotions, dispositions, and habits that ordinarily influence it, the rebel, any rebel, must, like Bartleby, sever one of the causal connections by which his will is energized. Moreover, the rebel can maintain his freedom only so long as he continues to reject as potentially "determining" all behavioral motives, "reasonable" or otherwise; but ironically enough, having refused to obey the dictates of any particular motive, the rebel discovers to his chagrin that his will is now less free (by one alternative) than it was before.

This then is the paradoxical moral of Melville's tale: the rebel's quest for freedom of mind must inevitably involve him in a life of ever-increasing limitations. By the end of our story, Bartleby, for all his humorous absurdity, has come to a not very humorous end. Total freedom of mind can apparently be attained only at the cost of life itself—and any rebel, Melville implies, is somewhere on the road to Bartleby's unfortunate destination.

Melville may have derived Bartleby's negative preferences form John Locke, Edwards' chief foe in Freedom of the Will, who sought to locate man's liberty in his "freedom to prefer"; or they may have come from Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of the "freedom of not-willing," as Daniel Stempel and Bruce M. Stillians have suggested [in their "'Bartleby the Scrivener': A Parable of Pessimism"]. But in either case, it is Edwards' and Priestley's sense of the absurdity of absolute freedom of mind and Melville's own recognition of the psychological dangers involved in the quest for it that seem to have dominated Melville's attitude toward his protagonist. And whether Bartleby is meant to stand for the Byronic hero, whom he resembles in his solitary, brooding pessimism, and with whom he is subtly compared at one point; whether he is meant to represent the contemplative mystic, as H. Bruce Franklin has asserted [in his The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology]; whether he is intended to be Melville himself, perhaps conscious of too "freely" pondering certain disagreeable facts of human existence; or whether, as seems to me most likely, Bartleby is capacious enough to stand for all of these; in any case, his rebellion can clearly end for Melville only in philosophical confusion and psychological disaster.

To say this of "Bartleby" is not to say enough, however. The catastrophe that abruptly ends the monomaniacal career of Ahab in Moby-Dick demonstrates in a powerful fashion the essential futility of Ahab's quest; yet the comfortable way of the "Lee Shore" remains for Melville an unsatisfactory alternative to that quest. And similarly, if half the ironic artillery of "Bartleby" is aimed and fired at the protagonist, the quester for an absolute freedom of mind, there is an equally potent attack launched squarely in the opposite direction—at the "comfortable" alternative to Bartleby, the narrator of the tale.

The physical walls within which Bartleby's story happens, those walls which so bother and bewilder Bartleby, have become so natural a part of the narrator's world that he is scarcely conscious of their existence. And this is a sign of something more significant; for after having glanced at the treatises of Edwards and Priestley, the narrator remarks:

Under the circumstances, those books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an allwise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I.… At last, I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content.

With his beliefs in Providence and predestination the narrator places himself philosophically in the camp of Edwards and Priestley; but more importantly, his cheery response to the limits imposed upon him by his philosophy, his reveling in the deterministic "walls" which limit both his freedom and his vision, suggests to us the equally cheery response of those philosophers. Keeping the narrator's declaration of contentedness in mind, let us listen for a moment to Priestley, for instance:

We ourselves, complex as the structure of our minds, and our principles of action are, are links in a great connected chain, parts of an immense whole, a very little of which only we are as yet permitted to see, but from which we collect evidence enough, that the whole system.. is under unerring direction, and that the final result will be most glorious and happy.…

And when our will and our wishes shall … perfectly coincide with those of the sovereign Disposer of [that system] … we shall, in fact, attain the summit of perfection and happiness.

This is the blithe sort of attitude which Melville apparently intended to satirize in creating "Bartleby"'s narrator. While Melville found himself siding with Edwards and Priestley in their insistence upon the difficulties of "free will," he could not understand, it seems, their ability to rejoice in their deterministic bonds. A rigorously determined world did not seem to Melville an environment particularly conducive to "perfection and happiness"; in fact, in creating "Bartleby" he chose to depict Priestley's glorious necessitarian "system" as a labyrinth of bleak and claustrophobic walls. Perhaps the limitations of mental necessity were inescapable; but Melville, as pessimistic realist, as a man deeply aware of certain hints of ineptitude in the "unerring direction" of the universe, and as something of a rebel himself, could not help but sympathize strongly, I imagine, with a Bartleby who attempted to break the shackles of his mental confinement—one who questioned life even if no answers were forthcoming, one who sought to pass beyond the walls of his mind rather than bask ignorantly like our narrator in the blissful nonvision of an incomprehensible Providence.

Thus while Bartleby's flaw is his radical refusal to undergo the imposition of psychological limits, the narrator's unattractiveness stems from his readiness to accept them. Yet there is a good deal more wrong with the narrator than his philosophical stance: in his case, a dead-wall epistemology is bonded to a particularly subtle (and hence pernicious) form of immorality. Despite the narrator's frequent recourse to benevolent rhetoric and despite the common critical view which has characterized him as a somewhat befuddled but thoroughly sincere exponent of Christian charity, the alert reader of "Bartleby" must quickly recognize that the narrator's heart is no more right than his head.

In portraying the narrator's moral sense Melville seems to have relied heavily upon the moral theory of Jonathan Edwards, with whom the narrator was already linked philosophically. In his [The Nature of True Virtue] Edwards argued that "natural virtue" (based in man's love for himself), like "true virtue" (arising out of the redemptive effects of God's grace), was capable of producing good behavior; in fact, self-love, in Edwards' view, was not the bane of mankind some moralists thought it to be. Edwards wrote:

A man may, from self-love, disapprove the vices of malice, envy, and others of that sort, which naturally tend to the hurt of mankind.… May he not from the same principle approve the contrary virtues of meekness, peaceableness, benevolence, charity, generosity, justice, and the social virtues in general.… It is undoubtedly true that some have a love to these virtues from a higher principle. But yet I think it as certainly true that there is generally in mankind a sort of approbation of them, which arises from self-love.

The narrator of "Bartleby" could well be thinking of that particular passage when, after fearing momentarily one afternoon that he might murder Bartleby out of frustration, he remembers the biblical injunction which exhorts men to "love one another" and remarks:

Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man, that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

The narrator clearly knows his Edwards—but perhaps not so well as he might; for although Edwards did admit that in the absence of better motives, self-interest might induce a "sort of approbation" of virtue, he quickly went on to say this:

[Nothing] wherein consists the sense of moral good and evil which there is in natural conscience, is of the nature of a truly virtuous taste.…

[For it] is approved … in the same manner as men … like those things with which they habitually connect the ideas of profit, pleasantness, comfortableness, etc. This sort of approbation … is easily mistaken for true virtue … [but] the difference [lies] in this, that it is not from love to Being in general, but from self-love.

Melville's narrator, however, goes so far as to suggest that "sweet charity" can issue out of self-love—or, more precisely, that a love for others can be founded, in his own case, upon the self-interested "prudence" which, we have been assured, is one of his strong points. We might well ask, with Edwards, if this brand of "charity" be not somewhat too sweet; and certainly Melville had no difficulty in locating the snake hidden within the profusion of the narrator's moralistic rhetoric. Self-interest could perhaps produce an easy sort of benevolence; but like Edwards, Melville seems to have felt that only a "higher principle" could promote an honest sympathy for other people. A love rooted in self-interest was apparently for Melville hardly a love at all.

Thus we begin to understand more fully Bartleby's sullen unresponsiveness in the face of the narrator's persistent offers of friendship: these offers are motivated, as Bartleby seems instinctively able to recognize, by selfishness masquerading as "charity." The following self-serving reflection on the part of the narrator is typical:

I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence.… He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less-indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby … will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.

The narrator is by no means the incarnation of outrageous cruelty or greed: at times he seems to achieve a certain degree of concern for Bartleby. But unfortunately his is always that tepid love, that oh-so-practical love, that always prudent love which Bartleby quite rightly views as dubious.

What does the narrator lack morally? His bust of Cicero is perhaps the best clue to that:

The next morning came.…

"Bartleby," said I … "come here; I am not going to ask you to do anything you would prefer not to do—I simply wish to speak to you."

Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.
"Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?"
"I would prefer not to."
"Will you tell me anything about yourself?"
"I would prefer not to."

"But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you."

He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which, as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.

Since Cicero was himself an eminent barrister, it is not surprising that the narrator possesses a bust of him. Yet that bust is, in one sense, grossly out of place in the narrator's office; for Cicero (in his treatise on moral duties, his [Three Books of Offices or Moral Duties]) wrote as follows:

If a man should lay down as the chief good, that which has no connexion with virtue, and measure [virtue] by his own interests, and not according to its moral merit; if such a man shall act consistently with his own principles, [but] is not sometimes influenced by the goodness of his heart, he can cultivate neither friendship, justice, nor generosity.

Unlike Edwards, Cicero maintained, in fact, that without a measure of fellow feeling unadulterated with self-love there could be no virtue of any kind. Hence Bartleby's meaningful glance at Cicero seems to be both Melville's way of endorsing Cicero's objection to the sort of "virtue" Edwards would later call "natural" and Bartleby's stubborn way of insisting that the self-interested narrator, "friendly" as he is, lacks the essence of "sweet charity"—a sympathetic heart.

But now we come to a crucial question. Does the narrator's encounter with Bartleby bring him to a state of increased awareness? Does Bartleby, in other words, make a better man out of the narrator? The affirmative case has been frequently argued, with the following remarks, made by the narrator in the course of examining the contents of Bartleby's desk, usually cited as proof:

What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! [Bartleby's] poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-Street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness.… And here Bartleby makes his home.… For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener's pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet.

To be sure, there are clear signs here that Bartleby has had some effect upon his employer: the narrator is, in fact, glimpsing "for the first time in his life" what Melville liked to call the "dark" side of human existence. But glimmerings of awareness are only glimmerings—and ought not to be confused with epistemological or moral rejuvenation. Both the narrator's comfortable glance at Edwards and Priestley and his statement in praise of self-interest are, we recall, still to come; and even here, at his best, the narrator cannot quite rid his benevolence of sentimentality; nor focus his wandering attention on possible ways of improving Bartleby's unfortunate situation; nor pass beyond "sad fancyings" and gothic imaginings into the more warm-blooded, though sometimes painful realm of genuine human feeling. And if, by the end of Melville's tale, we continue to cherish the notion that the perplexing confrontations with his mysterious clerk have managed to produce a significant dent in the narrator's obtuseness, we are doomed to disappointment; for the narrator attains new heights of vague sentimentality rather than a peak of awareness in his climactic and highly revealing sigh: "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" Morally and epistemologically speaking, "strange discoveries" have indeed "hovered round" the narrator at times; but his chances for permanent improvement are apparently laid to rest forever in Bartleby's grave.

Who then is Melville's narrator? He is that sort of man one tends to find in high places: the snug man whose worldly success has convinced him that this is the "best of all possible worlds," and whose virtues cluster around a "prudential" concern for maintaining his own station. The narrator can never fully understand or truly befriend Bartleby because the narrator is simply too complacent, both philosophically and morally, to sympathize with human dissatisfaction and despair. Hence he is, as Melville well knew, precisely the sort of individual next to whom a Bartleby, however deranged and doomed, appears to us most admirable, most nearly heroic.

"Bartleby" is preëminently, then, a story of psychological polarities, of two views of life, unsatisfactory in themselves (though for very different reasons) and forever incapable of synthesis. And thus, in one important respect, "Bartleby" manifests a greater pessimism than does Moby-Dick: it may display a "Dickensian" mildness of tone and a web of humorous ironies that the "Shakespearian" tragedy of Ahab seems to lack; but it has, nevertheless, no Ishmael. From out of the wreck of Bartleby's quest, no one "steps forth"; the only survivor of Bartleby's catastrophe is the narrator, placid and uncomprehending to the end, firmly entrenched on the "Lee Shore." In "Bartleby" Edwards and Priestley, Melville and we his readers are fashioned into two representative individuals—a comfortable lawyer and his uncomfortable clerk—who meet, disturb each other for a time, and go their widely separate ways. Obliviousness or oblivion—those are the alternatives of "Bartleby."