Hunger Strike: Bartleby's Perpetual Fast

Food is a potent element in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby,” a grim short story about a scrivener who refuses to play by the rules of the capitalist game and eventually pays for it with his life. Bartleby, unlike his colleagues who even bear names similar to food items, eats very little through the text and therefore refuses to partake in the capitalist system if the readers understand food to be a symbol of desire and avarice. The narrator, when deciding how to best deal with the scrivener’s impertinence, analyzes the situation in terms of cost vs. loss and metaphors pertaining to food. Bartleby eventually dies alone in a jailhouse from starvation despite the narrator’s best attempts to keep him comfortable in his incarceration. Food not only represents greed in the material, capitalist world, but a lack of it leads to spiritual depravity and eventual death, a theme that proves crucial if Melville meant to illustrate through the text that moderation is a key to a successful life, unlike the one Bartleby led.

Melville’s supporting characters are introduced at the beginning with the disclaimer from author/narrator that names such as Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut “may seem names the like of which are not usually found in the Directory” (Melville 96). They are indeed strange names, all of which invoke a connotation of food or the act of eating: “Turkey” brings to mind a fowl of the same name, “Ginger Nut” refers to a small cake, and “Nippers” though distinct from the other two does seem to carry a reference to nibbling or eating fastidiously. These three men are usually found eating while they work, though Melville pays the most attention to Turkey in this respect. At one point, the scrivener is so taken with his ginger nut cakes that he accidentally applied one of them on a mortgage as a seal! At another point, Turkey’s less favorable qualities are described using a food simile:

I verily believe that buttoning [Turkey] up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him – upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. (100)

Turkey’s insolence and vain attachment to this coat and the comfort it provides is all found within a simple simile of a horse feeling his oats. Just as too much food breeds laziness and indolence in horses, the down coat makes Turkey sloth-like and perhaps allows him to ascribe to himself an air of affluence that he doesn’t quite deserve. In these brief lines, Melville appears to be laying down the foundations for his later symbolic use of food for avarice and capitalistic profit; a horse feels his oats just as Turkey sees his coat as a marker of capitalistic success.

Turkey and Nippers, the two senior scriveners who are portrayed as foils to Bartleby’s non-conformist persona are both extremely fond of ginger nut cakes and routinely send Ginger Nut out to procure the wafer-like baked goods:

…they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that particular cake – small, flat, round and very spicy – after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning, when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers – indeed, they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny – the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. (101)

Ginger nut cakes are described as being similar to currency – they are small and flat and just like thin wafers. They are also fairly cheap, and both Turkey and Nippers eat them in vast quantities. Melville is likening these small, flat, readily available cookies to actual currency and its value in a capitalist society; in consuming so many ginger nut cakes, Turkey and Nippers are actively participating in the capitalist system. Consumption of food items here is directly homologous to the consumption of goods that is the oil in a capitalist machine.

Bartleby is a highly ascetic individual and is in the habit of denying himself comforts like Turkey’s coat, for example. His is a meager existence, as shown through the narrator’s reflection on his habits: “I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that, too, without a plate, mirror, or bed” (110). Bartleby is in essence a permanent fixture in the narrator’s office, but he never leaves any permanent evidence of his lodging or existence therein. He becomes a ghost, a phantasm that floats around the office and haunts the narrator. When the boss goes searching for some of Bartleby’s personal effects or proof of his residence there, he finds “in a newspaper a few crumbs of gingernuts and a morsel of cheese” (110). Bartleby eats only enough to survive and hides all signs of consumption very well.

I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house, while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee, even, like other men; that he never went anywhere… (111)

On a metaphoric level, Bartleby does not take part in the greed and desire that eating places and teahouses represent; on a literal level, he refuses to take part in the actual consumption that a capitalistic society is based on. He does not even drink, further emphasizing his ascetic nature. The fact that his unlike “other men” in his behavior reinforces the fact that Bartleby is the lone individual who refuses to play by the rules of the game and intentionally sets himself apart from the rest by his own unique modus operandi.

The narrator recognizes that Bartleby is eccentric and takes pity upon him, turning the scrivener into his own personal charity case. In helping Bartleby, he feels as if he is doing a good deed:

If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartley, to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. (106)

In this crucial passage, Melville combines the idea of conscience with capitalism and more food metaphors. The narrator is attempting to do a good deed and bestow charity upon another individual, an idea that seems strangely at odds with a capitalist system in which every individual is supposed to work for personal monetary gain. This leads the reader to be skeptical of the narrator’s motives; indeed, he seems to be convincing himself to be kind and charitable toward Bartleby simply because he is quickly realizing that this is one problem that won’t quite go away. In the manner of a true capitalist, he analyzes the situation in terms of cost vs. loss and concludes that in keeping Bartleby with him he would be losing little in comparison to what he gains. Melville seems to have anticipated the reader’s conclusions regarding food and desire or avarice and weaves in more metaphors, referring to the narrator’s ease of conscience as a “sweet morsel”; in keeping Bartleby around – more out of necessity than philanthropic desire – he purchases a “delicious self-approval.” Combining the language of food – hence, greed and materialism – with language of charity and conscience undercuts the narrator’s assertions and emphasizes to the reader that he is insincere in wanting to help Bartleby simply for the scrivener’s good. In the end, he’s helping Bartleby in order to help himself, a practice that is very much in keeping with capitalist doctrine.

In the end, Bartleby is incarcerated and starves to death in prison despite the narrator’s attempts to see that he is well cared for. The grubman’s inquiry serves as a chilling premonition of the scrivener’s fate: “‘Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that’s all’” (127). Bartleby doesn’t even eat what meager sustenance the prison provides, replying simply that he would “prefer not to dine today” (128) seeing as how he is “unused to dinners” (128). Once again, this reminds the reader of his ascetic tendencies and the fact that he lived on cheese and ginger nut cakes while under the employ of the narrator. While the other prisoner that the grubman refers to toward the end of the book died of “consumption at Sing-Sing,” Bartleby’s death is entirely opposite, perhaps owing to the fact that since he lived differently, it was only fitting that he died differently. As the narrator reflects, Bartleby “[lived] without dining” (129), without indulging in any of the goods of the capitalist system and in the end his “underconsumption” or starvation killed him. What is problematic with this reading is that food, the symbol of greed, is necessary to live. Keeping that in mind, it is possible to argue that Melville seems to illustrate throughout the text that moderation in terms of both food and wealth is recommended, as either extreme could potentially lead to death.

Herman Melville uses food to represent avarice and desire as products of a capitalist system in his short story, “Bartleby”. In an environment of consumption and materialism, Bartleby maintains an ascetic lifestyle and refuses to play the capitalist game of consumption. The narrator, who embodies the ultimate capitalist, tries to convince himself that he is helping Bartleby but in reality is doing it more for himself than the scrivener. Bartleby wages a long battle against the capitalist system and eventually dies in prison, a casualty of his own lack of desire which was in part represented through a lack of physical consumption.