A life without variety is no life at
all. To sit down with friends and family and enjoy a fine meal with a good wine
is one of the greatest joys one can experience. To deny yourself variety is to
deny yourself joy. To be denied these joys is an even greater tragedy. In
Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby
the Scrivener, we see a great example of the life one must suffer through
when the option of choice is denied. When Bartleby dies the narrator claims he
“live[s] without dining.” The food references throughout Bartleby are used as
metaphors for diversity in life, and the lack of diversity is essentially
starvation.
Bartleby
is a prisoner who has been denied “social view and… direct human contact.”
(Heneghan). He has little choice as he is a member of the working class and
therefore must accept the jobs he is offered. The latest job for which he has
been hired involves long hours in a building “deficient in what landscape
painters call ‘life.’” (Melville 5.) He sees only blank white walls and the
view of the brick building next door. The first joy Bartleby looses out on is
the visual beauty of the world around him. Replacing trees or grass with
prison-like walls slowly wears at his spirit. Bartleby’s new coworkers deal
with their depressing atmosphere in different and unique ways. Turkey drinks,
but not in celebration, instead as a way to cope. Nippers, plagued with stress,
suffers from indigestion. Ginger Nut, the young and naïve new errand boy, is
only just beginning his long journey into Wall Street misery. Finally, the
narrator, Bartleby’s boss, is a “safe” man who has tried to live a life free of
challenge. Bartleby is not blessed to work in a large or diverse group; instead
he works with the same people day in and day out. The walls that surround him,
and the unhappy people are ever-present; his diet of life remains unchanging.
Mark Kingwell states “Bartleby will
not play the game of capital by the general rules of economy—rules that demand,
first the production of consumption and then, as a consequence, the production
of excess, paroxysms of luxury. Bartleby’s course is itself excessive, however,
a luxury of not doing. He prefers not to work. He prefers not to eat.” While,
at first, the consistency has little effect on Bartleby, he soon begins to
“prefer not to.” It is not only the work he prefers not to participate in but
he also prefers not to go home. The lifestyle of the working class was bleak in
the mid-19th century. One was required to work hard for little pay
and go home to cramped living quarters. The working-class would often relieve
their stress by frequenting a tavern but due to racial and economic tensions, taverns
were less than relaxing. Bartleby understood there was no escape. One who eats
the same thing every day will eventually become ill. The world in which he exists is a world driven by success and power, while the human body is powered
by the nutrients we ingest. Bartleby’s eventual rejection of the corporate
world is accompanied by his eventual rejection of food as well.
Although the story of Bartleby’s
coworkers may appear amusing, or at least not as dramatic as Bartleby’s, they
too are suffering from the stress associated with a demanding job. Their drive
for power is represented by their relationship with food and references to
hunger. “When business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these
cakes, as if they were mere wafers” (Melville 14.) Turkey’s drive for success
was supplemented by his hunger for the ginger nut cookies. Yet, the narrator,
who states he has taken the easiest route possible, names his employees after
food. He views life’s treasures as things based on material possessions, but he
desires to not do the work. This is essentially the same as someone who refuses
to ever feel hunger so they always surround themselves with a feast. And
Bartleby eventually begins to sustain himself on ginger nuts only, which Allen
F. Stein argues in his article “The Motif of Voracity in ‘Bartleby’” shows
Bartleby is not driven by his hunger, or his need for great success. The
narrator says of Bartleby, “I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or
eating-house, while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer
like Turkey, or tea or coffee even, like other men.” (Melville 92.) The
narrator seems to almost understand the significance of monotony, but fails to
see the full extent of it in Bartleby’s life.
After being hauled off to the tombs,
Bartleby refuses to eat all together. The narrator remains confused by the
choices Bartleby makes and again fails to see to what extent Bartleby is
trapped in a life of monotony. The narrator sees prison life as a sad existence
and tries to comfort Bartleby by hiring someone to cook his meals. Bartleby
refuses to eat that food as well because to him, the tombs are essentially the
same life but in a different building. The narrator justifies Bartleby’s
actions by stating he would have suffered from working in the Dead
Letters Office. He asks the reader “conceive a man by nature and misfortune
prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten
it than that of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for
the flames?” (Melville 250.) Being so detached, the narrator fails to see how
someone who is not driven by success, or by hunger, would rather starve than be
an active participant. If Bartleby does not have joy, does not have support,
and does not have a full and varied life and diet, there simply is no point in
choking it down just to survive.
Work Cited
Heneghan,
Bridget. “A Spirit of Humanity: Bartleby and the Modern Prison
System.” Melville Society Extracts 129 (2005):
14+. Expanded Academic
ASAP. Web 8
April 2012.
Kingwell,
Mark. “The Prison of ‘Public Space’: Before We Take to the Streets,
This Pervasive
Concept Needs Rethinking.” Literary
Review of Canada 16.3
(2008): 18+
Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 April 2012.
Melville,
Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street.” Literature:
A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner et al 2nd
ed. Boston: Bedford,
2009. 20-60. Print.
Stein,
Allen F. The Motif of Voracity in
“Bartleby.” ESQ: A Journal of the
American Renaissance 21. First Quarter
1975: 29-34. Web 8 April 2012.
Click on the image for quotes overheard in the elevator of Goldman Sachs. Bartleby, how could you not be happy when you get to work with people like this?
