The passage to be commented on is:
The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? 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? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:--the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity:--he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!
Even the name Dead Letter Office is not inspiring for the human people of society. This dehumanizing office is not even recognized by the public. It is unknown to the majority of society. This office represents the workers who have lost their souls. This enviroment might have played an important role in Bartleby's characteristics, and his mechanical thinking which went haywire. The Dead Letter Office's name instills a
fear of mortallity
, to work there would depress one to an endless degree. Working within this type of environment, is Bartleby's rebellion at all surprizing? In what way does this office represent the different themes of the era, the author, and the story?
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Bartleby
9/3/96
