Working in an office, in a cubicle, is the perfect picture of conformity. Employees are forced to fit their belongings, nay their souls, into a small box, nice and perfect. Melville mocks transcendentalism by putting a transcendental character into this very much anti- transcendentalist situation. Anti-transcendentalist philosophies come through in Melville’s writing in that Bartleby, who exhibits transcendental qualities, dies, the narrator is very much anti-transcendentalist, and in that even the transcendental character can’t be completely transcendental.
One element of anti- transcendentalism in the story is the conformity of the narrator. He even says, “I am one of those unambitious lawyers… All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man.” (Melville, p.1). Even the very nature of his work, copying documents with no thought of the material, is rather anti- transcendentalist. When he found Bartleby in his office on Sunday, rather than call the police or otherwise raise a ruckus, he simply left. He is very anti¬-transcendentalist, going against the free thinking and individualism of transcendentalism.
Another prominent anti-transcendentalist theme is that Bartleby, the transcendentalist character, not only fails in society, but dies. He is very much a transcendentalist – when asked to help examine papers, he simply replied with “I would prefer not to” (Melville, p.7). This is very transcendentalist – he is free thinking, and doesn’t conform to social mores. And too, he fails in society – he is thrown in jail, where he dies. The transcendentalist character dying, because of his transcendentalist behaviors and qualities, is very much anti-transcendentalist.
A final anti-transcendentalist theme is that even the transcendentalist character can’t manage to be fully transcendentalist. Bartleby is not self-reliant – he works for the narrator, and relies on the narrator for shelter. “I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday morning”(Melville, p.10) says the narrator, but still he feels that “both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.” (Melville, p.11) Too, he is a scrivener, a copyist, which is inherently anti-transcendentalist, since it is simply blind copying, with no thought involved.
Forcing a transcendentalist character into such an anti-transcendentalist situation as in Melville’s story brings about strong anti-transcendentalist feelings to his story. Through Bartleby, the transcendentalist character, failing and then dying, him not even managing to be truly transcendental, and the narrator being very much anti-transcendentalist, Melville has much anti-transcendentalist philosophy in his writing.