One of my favorite literary genres that always gets me out of a reading slump is the novella, which not only avoids the heaviness of long novels but also reduces the quick paced narrowness of short stories. The novella is an art that combines briefness with fulfilling the elements of the literary narrative such as plot, characters, conflict, etc. One of these novellas is Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street written by the American novelist Hermann Melville in 1853, translated into Arabic by Salwa Al-Otaibi and published by Dar Athar in 2019.
The plot of the novella can be summarized as follows: the setting is a copy office on Wall Street in New York, where files and documents are manually rewritten to obtain several copies of the same document, since there were no printers or copy machines in the 19th century when this novella was written. Four people work in this office: the lawyer, who is the head of the office, alongside Turkey, Nippers, and a young boy. One day, a young man, Bartleby, applies for the copy job and is hired on the spot. He began working with sincerity and dedication. However, as the days passed, Bartleby’s actions began to change as he refrained from performing some of his duties. For example, he refused to participate in the revision of the transcribed manuscript and to compare it with the original as a group with the other employees, where one of them reads the original document and the others holding the copies follow along. This is a routine procedure, but Bartleby suddenly decided that he would “rather not” participate in it.
This process of refusal evolved, until he suddenly would “rather not” do anything; even the same copying job that he was working nonstop in the beginning. When the head of the office decided to fire him, he was surprised that Bartleby refused to leave the premises, forcing them to move to another building.
In this revision, I pour my focus into the intertextuality between Bartleby’s character in this novel and Meursault’s character in the novella The Stranger, written by the French author Albert Camus. Intertextuality entails reading a literary text as a rumination of another literary text. To do this, we need to understand Meursault’s character, which requires an understanding of Camus’ philosophy.
Generally, existential philosophies based on the fundamental ideas of the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche are a critique of the absolute value system, which says that values have an intrinsic unchanging superior significance. Nietzsche questions the existence of such system regardless of its origin, whether religious as in the Middle Ages or rational as in the ages of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Thus, finding the meaning for life is futile if the ultimate goal is to strive for abstract metaphysical perfection – which is also an absolute value.
Before Nietzsche, the Danish philosopher Kirkegaard introduced a similar idea, believing that religious values and others alike are all considered non-absolute. The absence of this practical framework of values is what we call existential anxiety, and both Nietzsche and Kirkegaard had opted for opposite opinions. Nietzsche rejects especially religious and Christian values, defining them as invalid because they assume absolute truth. During this time Kirkegaard suggested what he called the Leap of Faith, believing that each system requires an initial leap of faith to overcome the irrationality of values, thereby believing in this system and accepting its terms.
This simple background is enough to understand the context of Camus’ philosophy, in order to comprehend The Stranger.
If a person lacks a value system that helps him make life choices, what makes the choice we make to please ourselves without harming others, as Simone de Beauvoir puts it, the right choice? Simone de Beauvoir says this act contributes to the elimination of existential anxiety. However, Camus objects by questioning the purpose of every choice we make, as they all seem like a delay to death. Therefore, Camus highlights one philosophical problem: suicide. Everything we do ends up in us dying, based on arbitrary, undefined values. The only philosophical question is: Why not commit suicide?
Camus answers this question through the myth of Sisyphus in his lengthy essay with the same title. The Greek myth revolves around Sisyphus, a king punished by the great god Zeus after Sisyphus defrauded the God of Death, and his punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a mountain, only for it to roll back to the bottom once he reaches the top, repeating this loop for eternity. Camus says that life resembles this absurd act, but we always imagine Sisyphus as sad and miserable. Camus offers another perspective, where Sisyphus is happy, and the reason for his happiness is enjoying simple things like the sight of the skyline as he comes down again to lift the boulder; we must imagine Sisyphus with a smile on his face. According to Camus, absurdity is not a problem that needs to be solved but a reality that must be celebrated. As long as this reality undoubtedly defeats us physically, we can prevail over it mentally and psychologically, and therein lies the idea of “The Absurd Hero”.
We can now go back to Meursault and Bartleby and understand how their characters embody absurdity and identify their common characteristics. In The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault is a character who became aware of life’s absurdity through a milestone shocking moment in his life: the death of his mother. At that moment, he noticed his lack of interest and continued living his life to the fullest despite everything. Since the first days of grief, he was able to put his grief aside. Furthermore, he continued to date Mary, which shows that he is a stereotypical absurd hero. But Camus put his hero in a real predicament to face the only true existential philosophy problem: why doesn’t Meursault commit suicide?
In the novella, Meursault kills an unnamed Arab man in cold blood and there is nothing to justify his action except for the following: Meursault realized the absurdity of life and the absence of absolute values, yet he failed to accept this system as a framework for life. At the same time, he realized that the only imperative way was death. He chose to combine the celebration of life and suicide by doing what he feels to be right at the moment, even if it has no meaning or justification, and this led to his death. Meursault, the absurd hero, chose to commit suicide but by welcoming life’s absurdity. He chose suicide and death, by doing what he felt like doing without consulting any moral system.
On the other hand, we see Bartleby as another example of the idea of “The Absurd Hero”. As mentioned in the summary of Bartleby, the Scrivener, Bartleby decided to stop doing everything for no reason, as if he suddenly realized the absurdity of repeated purposeless routines. In other words, Bartleby was like Sisyphus, but Bartleby suddenly decided to rebel and stop performing entirely. Here lies the difference between him and Meursault; the latter’s position was positive and proactive, while Bartleby’s attitude was negative, lazy, and inactive. This also evident in his famous quote “I’d rather not.” This negated statement embodies his negative position. If Meursault presents the character of “The Absurd Hero” who welcomed life’s absurdity to pursue death, we can say that Bartleby represents the opposite or maybe “The Anti-Absurd Hero” who realized the absurdity of life but rejected it through inaction. He left his fate entirely in the hands of the absurdity of events without the slightest effort, starting with his refusal to work, to his transfer to a psychiatric institution, and to his negative death due to his absolute inaction.
Another point worth mentioning is the narration. In The Stranger, the narrator is Meursault himself narrating the events as if he was in control of them. Meanwhile, in Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator is the elderly manager of the office. This also highlights Bartleby’s lack of action, especially since the narrative was interspersed with many questions from the senior who is trying to understand Bartleby’s “strange” behavior. You might even wonder if the story was about Bartleby or about the office manager. What is also interesting is that the narrator portrays Bartleby as his exact opposite, representing perhaps Nietzsche’s rejection of the absolute values system. This also includes religion and rebellion: the office manager is a Christian man who goes to church on Sundays and carries out his work duties and returns to his house to play his role as a traditional family man, the absolute opposite of Bartleby. This contradiction is the root of his curiosity and perhaps his attraction or even pity towards Bartleby, and his attempts to understand and then help him. This contradiction also further highlighted Bartleby’s absurd traits.
Both Meursault and Bartleby are absurd heroes who chose to rebel in their own way. They rebelled against the system of arbitrary values radically but uniquely, yet at the same time ended with the same fate: indirect suicide and death. The former decided to take matters into his own hands; to die loudly, as portrayed in the moment of his execution in front of the masses with a wide smile on his face. While the latter decided to rebel quietly and die by doing nothing without an audience, alone and miserable in a corner, like he never existed.
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