Suicide in Bartleby and Life in the Iron Mills Essay

Suicide in Bartleby and Life in the Iron Mills Life in the Iron Mills and Bartleby are centered on characters who are alienated laborers, looking for means through which they cannot be deprived of their humanity. Hugh Wolfe and Bartleby are both workers who have been victimized by the capitalistic system. As Karl Marx explains, the capitalistic system exploits the laborer and thus robs the laborer of his humanity through alienating the laborer. Both Wolfe and Bartleby become victims of the system, for they are not only alienated and dehumanized. But in their struggle against the system, they take their own lives. Their suicides are representative of how far alienation reached into the lives of Bartleby and Wolfe and how far†¦show more content†¦I should have been quite regulated with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically. (Melville 9). This nature of working disturbed the employer because he noticed the machine-like style of Bartlebys. Bartlebys lack of human qualities bothered the narrator, as he did later become concerned about Bartlebys condition and began to inquire of his past. It is evident that the alienation process has already begun to take hold on Bartleby, long before he took the scrivener position. He is doing work for which he is being paid for and refuses to do any favors. He knows that his labor is for sale and that he will do only what the lawyers money buys, and nothing more. Second, Bartleby makes it a point to explain that he would prefer not to do something, inserting the fact that he is the one deciding. Through his disobedience and his repeating the phrase I would prefer not to Bartleby was struggling to preserve his humanity. Bartleby refused to allow the lawyer to exploit his labor and his energy. The manner in which he was trying so hard to preserve his autonomy shows how he wished not to be further alienated from the work process, for he wanted control over exactly what task he did or did not perform. Later in the book we find Bartleby taking up residence at the office where he worked. When Bartlebys employer approached him about the fact that he was living in the office and asked him to leave the