Bartleby the Scrivener

Any parent who names their child Bartleby is simply setting them up for a life of awkward.

I think I shall now attempt to delve into question 8: "what motivates bartleby's behavior? Why do you think Melville withholds the information about the Dead Letter Office until the end of the story? Does this background adequately explain Bartleby?"

Bartleby sounds like a classic case of depression. He is not angry, nor is he sad. He simply goes about his work of scrivening, mindlessly copying legal documents. His greatest indication towards depression is his severe lack of motivation. He performs the task required of him, but refuses to do anything else, from walking to the post office, to walking to the next room to summon Nippers. He does not divulge any information about his past, implying that he feels cut off from other people. Eventually he loses the motivation to work, and even to live. He gives up on life, and stops eating, and eventually just starves.

So what caused his depression? It probably has something to do with that Dead Letter Office then, I bet. The Dead Letter Office was the office of the United States Postal Service that took all letters that were deemed undeliverable and disposed of them in order to respect the sender's privacy. One could certainly view that as a depressing job. One takes in letters, conversations between loved ones that will never be, professions of love and might never be read, information meant to brighten a day or save a life that instead ends up in a furnace. Such a depressing atmosphere would surely weigh down on poor Bartleby until it eventually just crushed his spirit, and he became the man of few words that we know and love.

You now understand the meaning of "Going Postal."