Catherine Azzopardi and Jessica Salvatin
AP English Literature and Composition
Seminar Facilitation
“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” by Herman Melville
“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” Psalm 4:8

Herman Melville, American author, isbest-known for his novels pertaining to the sea and his 1851 masterpiece, Moby Dick. In 1819, Herman Melville was born in New York City into an established merchant family. He was the third child of eight. His father, Allan Melvill, went bankrupt and died when Herman Melville was 12. Allan’s wife, Maria Melvill, who added an “e” to their surname after Allan’s death, was left alone to raise the children, living in Albany, New York. Through his mother's influence, biblical stories became a part of Melville's imagination from his early childhood. He attended AlbanyClassicalSchool in 1835. From the age of 12, he worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand. In search of adventure and financial freedom, Melville shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the whaler Acushnet. He later joined the US Navy, and started year-long voyages on ships, sailing both the Atlantic and the South Seas. In his mid-20's, Melville returned to his mother's house to write about his adventures. Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, and they had four children; the family lived in a farmhouse in Massachusetts, nearby friend and fellow author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville is known for a variety of short stories, novels, essays, and poems that went largely unnoticed until the 1920s. Herman Melville died September 28, 1891; the New York Times obituary read his name as “Henry Melville.”

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: The Story of Wall Street,” by Herman Melville, is about an elderly prudent lawyer who instead of speaking in front of juries, runs a Wall Street business that handles “rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds” (124). He has three employees, fondly nicknamed Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut; Turkey and Nippers are two idiosyncratic legal copiers, or scriveners, while Ginger Nut is a 12-year-old office boy. The lives of these men change forever when their elderly employer hires the “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” (128) Bartleby as another scrivener. Bartleby exhibits strange habitsand a passive resistance to doing anything he doesn’t “prefer” to do, and he thus enchants and enrages his employer and fellow employees. After failing to ruffle Bartleby’s feathers and get him to do his job, the narrator moves with Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger-Nut to another building and leaves Bartleby behind in the empty building. The landlord forces Bartleby to go to the Tombs, or jail, where Bartleby still refuses to eat or engage with others and he dies.

In our seminar, we will use a theological lens to analyze the characters of the employer and Bartleby in “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” We will focus on the different aspects of character as shown by the below terms.

Terms:
• Characterization: The methods by which a writer creates people in a story so that they seem actually to exist.
• Showing: A major method to authors use to present characters. It allows the author to present a character through talking and acting, and lets the reader infer what kind of person the character is.
• Telling: Another major method of presenting characters. It allows the author to intervene to describe and sometimes evaluate the character for the reader.
• Motivated Action: Actions where the reader or audience is offered reasons for how the characters behave.
• Plausible Action: Action by a character in the story that seems reasonable, given the motivations presented.
• Consistent: Behavior of a character that is compatible with his/her temperament.
• Absurdist Literature: Literature in which characters are often alienated from themselves and their environment in an irrational world.
• Antihero: In the irrational world of Absurdist Literature, instead of a traditional hero, there is an antihero, who has little control over events.
• Dynamic: Refers to a character that undergoes some kind of change because of the action in the plot.
• Static: Refers to a character that does not change throughout the work.
• Foil: Refers to a type of character that helps to revel by contrast the distinctive qualities of another character.
• Flat Character: A character that embodies one or two qualities, idea, or traits that can be readily descried in a brief summary. They are not psychologically complex characters and therefore are readily accessible to readers.
• Stock Character: A character that embodies a stereotype that makes him/her a “type” not an “individual.”
• Round Character: A character that is more complex than a flat or stock character. Round characters display the inconsistencies and internal conflict found in most real. They are more fully developed and therefore are harder to summarize.
Discussion Questions
Please answer question one in a fully developed paragraph; quotes are optional but highly recommended to show your mastery of the text. Then, please choose two of the remaining questions to answer in again, fully developed paragraphs.

  1. Given light of this quote: “I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scrivener, had been all predestined from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose…” (142), do you believe Bartleby’s death in the Tombs was inevitable? Why? (Hint: see the footnote on that page).
  2. How does Bartleby’s language and appearance affect his ability to resist any order or job given to him? Expand on the idea of “passive resistance.”
  3. What is the significance of the subtitle: “A Story of Wall Street,” and how does that apply to the present status of Wall Street?
  4. What is the significance of the narrator’s comparison of Bartleby to Job? (Hint: Look for the footnote on page 148)
  5. Choose two of the characters from the story besides the narrator, and classify each of them in a short paragraph in regards if they are a foil, flat, stock, or round character.
  6. Who do you thinkis the anti-hero in this story? Why?
  7. Why do you think that the narrator mentions the time of twelve o’ clock so much throughout the story?
  8. How is Bartleby’s subconscious revealed in his carefully chosen responses and in the inert and dignified way he represents himself?
  9. What is the meaning of the final quote: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” (148).