In "Bartleby the Scrivener," discuss the story's humor and how it affected your response to Bartleby.

Bartleby is a very funny story, but as is the way with Melville, the humor is very dark. I think the humor comes from Bartleby's complete passivity and the lawyer's inabilty to have any impact on him whatsoever. Sometimes, the humor is very broad, as in the scene where the lawyer asks Turkey's opinion and he instantly jumps to his feet and says he'll "black his eyes for him!" Other times, the humor comes from...

Bartleby is a very funny story, but as is the way with Melville, the humor is very dark. I think the humor comes from Bartleby's complete passivity and the lawyer's inabilty to have any impact on him whatsoever. Sometimes, the humor is very broad, as in the scene where the lawyer asks Turkey's opinion and he instantly jumps to his feet and says he'll "black his eyes for him!" Other times, the humor comes from the lawyer's own comic inability to exert any influence over Bartleby: "Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were," the lawyer says after he is turned away from his own office on a Sunday morning by Bartleby, who is living there. Nothing seems to work: Bartleby won't do any work, won't leave, won't respond to orders of any kind, won't even eat -- he simply prefers not to. Finally, the lawyer decides to change offices, but even then, Bartleby remains haunting the halls of the old building. He eventually is removed by the new tenant, who -- finally -- calls the police. Bartleby dies alone in prison, presumably of hunger.

If we think of the story as funny, then it seems fair to ask what the joke is about. On one level, clearly the lawyer is the object of Melville's satire: all of his scruples, and good wishes towards Bartleby prove to be completely irrelevant. It may also be that Bartleby, in his refusal to participate in life, also is a comic figure: however much he may prefer to not engage with others, he nevertheless is required to exist. Maybe his death is the only real effect the lawyer can have on him, and the only one that can have any meaning for Bartleby. In that case, perhaps the humor of the story points toward the ultimate blankness of existence, as represented by Bartleby staring at the blank wall, and the inability of good-meaning men like the lawyer to do anything about it.