Bartleby, the Scrivener by Melville
Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, we end Short Story September with “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” by Melville – a seemingly simple tale about men in a law office that becomes a puzzling, existential tale. Dcn. Garlick is joined by two excellent guests: Mr. Joey Bremer, a teacher at Holy Family Classical School and an iconographer studying at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London, and “Montana” of Montana Classical College, an anonymous scholar who runs an X account that shares incredible insights on Melville’s Moby Dick.
Overall, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a perplexing, existential tale that tends to quietly unsettle you by revealing the realities of modern life.
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This episode of Ascend takes up Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” a quiet, unsettling tale whose central figure answers nearly every request with the same spare formula: “I would prefer not to.” The conversation lingers on the contrast between that stubborn preference and the narrator’s own softness—an elderly lawyer who prizes the easiest way of life, cannot quite govern his office, and keeps mistaking indecision for charity. Names, nicknames, dull eyes, and the cramped windows that look onto other walls all become clues: who in this world still possesses a will, and who has already been reduced to a role?
Listeners are invited to sit with the story’s larger questions rather than resolve them. What does the monotonous labor of copying do to a man? How does a commercial, conventional life flatten thumos and leave even well-meaning people lukewarm? Why does Bartleby’s refusal feel at once more human and more deathly than the quirks of his co-workers? Drawing on the textures of Moby-Dick and the aporetic spirit of Plato, the discussion treats the tale as a puzzle that rewards patient attention—an invitation to notice what modernity may have done to the soul, and to return to the text itself with sharper eyes.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Melville and ‘Bartleby’
00:12 Introduction to the episode and main themes
02:05 Biographical context of Melville’s life
03:47 Overview of ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’
06:54 Themes of monotony and human will
09:59 Character analysis: the narrator and Bartleby
14:57 Philosophical and literary connections
20:05 Implications for modern life and office culture
25:00 Concluding thoughts and interpretations
44:30 Dark passages and existential reflections in ‘Bartleby’
45:25 Repetition of life and the prison of modernity
46:24 The loneliness of Bartleby and the narrator’s solitude
46:56 Prison as a metaphor for societal dehumanization
48:02 Bartleby’s awareness of death and existential insight
50:24 The role of the dead letters office and existential suffering
51:29 Melville’s possible critique of modernity and capitalism
53:06 The dehumanizing nature of copying work and modern labor
55:07 Bartleby’s refusal as act of will and control
57:47 Reason, preference, and the will in Bartleby’s choices
01:00:20 The significance of small acts and existential meaning
01:02:19 Melville’s relationship with Plato and classical philosophy
01:09:24 The philosophical underpinnings of Melville’s critique
01:12:10 The aporetic nature of the story and open-ended interpretation
01:15:15 Comparison with other literary characters and philosophical figures
01:18:36 Fate, free will, and the acceptance of mortality
01:21:55 Melville, Plato, and the modern crisis of human nature
01:24:52 Final reflections on the story’s philosophical depth and relevance
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