Marxist Analysis Of Bartleby

Bartleby is a scrivener, a common job involving labor. Bartleby works with the Lawyer to allow his business to function. Bartleby, along with the other scriveners, are at the disposal of the Lawyer for work. The term that Foley can applies to them is that they are “wage slaves” (91). Foley also notes, “Marxist critics have argued that ‘Bartleby’ offers a portrait of the increasing alienation of labor in the rationalized capitalist economy that took shape in the mid-nineteenth-century United States” (Foley, 91). These men, including Bartleby, are treated as objects that are part of the machine that creates profit for the Lawyer’s business. Bartleby is creating the final product for the business, but is only a taking a very short cut of the business’s profit. Why does the Lawyer get paid more than Bartleby? Their title? Their know-how? …show more content…
It can be interpreted that Melville’s text is a representation of class difference and structure. Is it that Bartleby was fed up with the boundaries of class that caused him to be evasive? Foley actually disagrees. “The narrator’s various suggestions that the tale takes place in the early 1840s, a time of low ebb in class struggle, reinforce his view of the office as a seamless, organic, ‘‘natural’’ community. The narrator craves the good opinion of his employees and wishes to consider both himself and them as ‘sons of Adam’” (Foley, 95). I feel that Foley’s argument is plausible, but my interpretation was that Bartleby was unhappy with his place in the world. He was simply standing up for himself and his beliefs. Obviously Foley’s argument is based entirely on the historical context, which has grounds, but also is not a