Bartleby, the Scrivener

In both environments Bartleby inhabits, the office and the prison, he finds a “dead brick wall” to stare at in “revery” (18). The narrator contrasts the brick wall outside of his office windows with the sweeping views of nature that might otherwise be there. Like the office, the brick wall is sterile and dead. Bartleby’s only known habit aside from work is to stare at these walls and dream, although the narrator does not know what he dreams about. Brick walls are often dead ends, a symbol in keeping with the deterministic philosophy at the heart of “Bartleby.” If human behavior is determined by outside forces, then no behavior is less rational or natural than any other.

The folding screen the narrator brings into his office to section off Bartleby for the narrator’s privacy demarcates Bartleby’s “hermitage.” Though Bartleby is homeless, this metaphor of a secluded home is consistently used to refer to his tiny office space. For Bartleby, his place of work and his place of residence collapse into one, symbolized by his folding screen hermitage. Bartleby is not afforded the luxury of separating work and home.