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The Ambiguity in "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

If the character and the outlook of a writer are always reflected in his writings, Herman Melville, a man of conflict, shows much ambiguity in "Bartleby, the Scrivener", one of his best written short stories.

Melville's personal characteristics give much influence on the writing of the story.  Melville was, as Hawthorne stated, a man who could "neither believe nor be comfortable in his unbelief".  These words, to some extent, indicate a kind of ambiguity and conflict in Melville's character, which accompanied him all along in his life.  When Melville was only eleven his father died.  Since then he was in a constant search for an image of "father" but, at the same time, he had a sense of rebellion against the "father".  In his religious belief and outlook toward the world and human beings, Melville on the one hand believed in predestination and the Original Sin, thinking life was unpredictable and human beings were sinful.  But on the other hand, he believed there was still something good in the human heart.  Sometimes he believed there was a god, sometimes he thought it unknowable, and other times he thought it meaningless to explore.  All these facts show the equivocal and contradictory points in Melville's thoughts and beliefs, which have directly led to the ambiguity of the characters he depicted in the story. 

Bartleby, the protagonist of the story, seems to be on the positive side and have the writer's sympathy and pity.  The young man is quiet, honest, and harmless.  All that he wants is to seclude himself from the society and other people.  The reason, we may assume, is his hatred and disappointment of the society's darkness and callousness, and so he wants to be a total recluse in his "hermitage".  However, this is completely impossible in the modern society, in which one must have relation with others in order to survive.  So Bartleby's ending is surely in "death".  In this sense, Bartleby's tragedy may reflect Melville's mistrust of the idea of "unrestrained liberty".  However, the failure of Bartleby can also be interpreted as a strong satire on the slogan of "self-reliance" advocated by Emerson, which was then very popular in America.  Through the story of Bartleby, Melville wanted to demonstrate that an absolute non-conformist, a true no-sayer, can not by any means survive in the society.  In this case Bartleby is just a type of impractical, so-called "self-reliant" people that is doomed to perish. 

The lawyer "I", as the narrator of the story, is a main character, and about him we can also find much ambiguity.  He belongs to the prudent, easy-going and mediocre people whose life is neither a success nor a total failure.  He is friendly, tolerant to Bartleby, and once tries to help him.  When he first discovered the "miserable friendlessness and loneliness" of Bartleby, he was seized by "a fraternal melancholy", for he and Bartleby were both "sons of Adam".  After Bartleby was put into prison, he went to see him and even gave money to the grub-man to provide Bartleby with good food.  From this character we can perceive that "something good in human heart", as Melville believed.  And if we know that Melville conceived of man as "radically imperfect, obliged to compromise between absolute good and worldly necessity", we would not be surprised when the lawyer gives up helping Bartleby.  However, Melville also leaves space for another different interpretation about this character.  As the employer of Bartleby, the lawyer is the representative of society, a capitalist and a hypocrite.  He hires Bartleby only as a working-machine, and as far as this machine can operate for him (Bartleby works very hard at first), he can tolerate him to a certain point (allowing Bartleby to be exempted from examining the copies and rest for a few days for his eyesight).  But once Bartleby has no more use to him, he immediately tries to get rid of him, and finally kicks him out to the society, letting other people send Bartleby to the prison and, in fact, send him onto the road to death. 

As for the two characters, Turkey and Nippers, they can be regarded as either two snobbish, selfish philistines or two common "nobodies" in the society, having their little eccentricities and spending their lifetime in obscure, trivial work without doing harm to others. 

We can say, therefore, "Bartleby the Scrivener" has a great characteristic of its ambiguity.  And this ambiguity is closely related with its author Herman Melville's own thoughts and experiences.