Bartleby the Dead Letter

Herman Melville wrote about Bartleby in Bartleby the Scrivener and in The Dead Letter Office. The Dead Letter Office is a post office in Washington D.C. where letters end up at a dead end because the letters were not able to reach the destinations they were sent to. So whoever they had been sent to never got those them. Bartleby's job was to get those letters and later on burn them. In Bartleby the Scrivener, Bartleby no longer works in the Dead Letter Office; he now works for a lawyer. "Dead Letters And Dead Men: Narrative Purpose In 'Bartleby'" written by Thomas R. Mitchell and “Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Todd Giles are both critical articles where the authors point out different meanings from “Bartleby the Scrivener” relating Bartleby to a dead letter. There is great significance within the story between Bartleby and the Dead Letter Office because it plays a big part on Bartleby’s character , such as not being the average worker, lost, and antisocial, by having Bartleby compared to a dead letter.

An example that the dead letter office job plays a part in Bartleby’s character is Bartleby isn't the average office worker. He is the weird guy no one likes, doesn't do his work, and just spends hours sitting and staring. When asked to do something, he responds with "I would prefer not to". There isn't much of an argument being created with someone who doesn't give much to argue with. Yet, “Bartleby is improper, propertyless, without possession, while at the same time in full control of his own possession"(Giles). He tends keeps to himself instead of letting others know more about him. Nothing is known about Bartleby, except for what one can see and take in; such as his name, or that he never leaves the office. In Bartle...

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...d, and left as he is. No one cared to spend their time trying to opened him and read his story, "Bartleby, like the rumor of the dead-letter office, is that which never arrives in any form of quantifiable totality" (Giles).Exactly how the letters are left after they have arrived to the dead letter office is how Bartleby planned to stay after he left the dead letter office. Until the narrator grew attached to Bartleby without much realization; making the narrator not wanting to leave Bartleby and for Bartleby to not leave the world the way he did.

Works Cited

Mitchell, Thomas R. "Dead Letters And Dead Men: Narrative Purpose In `Bartleby.." Studies In Short Fiction 27.3 (1990): 329.Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.

Giles, Todd. "Melville's 'Bartleby, The Scrivener'." Explicator 65.2 (2007): 88- 91. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.