Bartleby's Workplace Sickness

Bartleby's workplace contributing to his sickness

In "Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall Street" the narrator talks of a man called Bartleby coming to his office for a job and hires him. After that Bartleby starts to slip into a state of complete isolation, which I believe is due to the nature of his work with our narrator "the lawyer". This is the analysis of how Bartleby's work at the lawyer's office contributed to his hysterical condition that came due to his work.

First of all I would emphasize on Bartley's previous work at the Dead Letter Office in Washington. We learn at the conclusion of the story that Bartleby had work there as a "subordinate clerk... handling dead letters and assorting them to flames"(86). This helps explain Bartleby's mental condition that was only going to degenerate. He had worked at dead letters office reading the letters of people who were sick, needed help or money, or were going through extreme conditions and probably "died unhoping; good tiding for those who died of unrelieved calamities"(86). This sort of work must have made him psychologically ill because he couldn't do any thing to help these people of the letters he was reading. The only thing he could do was to read and take that pain and suffering and make it of his own. Maybe that was only way he had thought he would be able to help them. Moreover Bartleby's previous job also tells that he must have grown to hate the society as he would have read those letters. He must have been shocked on the difference that this system or society puts between rich and poor.

Bartleby's leave from his past job might have been a good thing in progress to his mental condition, but his new job was going to make this condition only worse. As we learn in the story that as the time goes by Bartleby starts to isolate from his work, starting with his famous line "prefer not to" read and then not to "prefer" to do any more writing