The Love Song of Bartleby the Scrivener

-- By DanielChung - 04 May 2012

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” is a love story—a story literally about the meaning and expression of love. Law school has taught me little about love so far. Once in a while, I stumble across the ghosts of justice, fairness, equality, kindness, compassion, sympathy, empathy, and pro bono, but the ghost of love, I have yet to meet. Perhaps love is an inappropriate subject for law school—too fluffy and unprofessional. I would prefer not to think this way. Fighting for justice and fairness is necessary but not sufficient for meaningful change in our world. Melville’s “Bartleby” reminds us that love for others and for humanity should inform our legal work. Melville presents us with at least three different conceptions of love and challenges us to embrace humanity fully and palpably, not just with lofty notions of social justice but with our hearts and hands.

Using

Love’s most natural opposite is hate, but Melville presents a more nuanced opposite: using other people. As an employer, the narrator of “Bartleby” obviously uses Bartleby and others as scriveners in the office. However, this economic use is not the target of Melville’s criticism. Instead, Melville focuses on the narrator’s using Bartleby to purchase catharsis and righteousness. As the narrator admits, “[Bartleby] is useful to me…Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.” Even when Bartleby repeatedly refuses to do the narrator’s bidding, the narrator tolerates the insubordination and marvels at his own magnanimity. The narrator’s use of Bartley is more problematic than open hatred or contempt because it lulls the narrator into a false sense of self-righteousness. The harm is less visible and thus more justifiable. In fact, the narrator believes that keeping Bartleby in his current capacity is proper because Bartleby would otherwise receive harsh mistreatment from other employers. Melville’s juxtaposition of loving others and using others reminds us aspiring lawyers that our clients and colleagues are not pawns on our social justice chessboard. We should not use cases, clients, and causes to feel good about ourselves, but we should instead focus on doing actual good in the world. Granted, the two are not mutually exclusive, but the latter should be our primary goal.

Doing

Being