Alienation, Labor, and Capitalist Power in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Marxist Critical Analysis
الباحث الأول:
Assis. Lect. Zahraa Adil Abdulsahib
الباحثين الآخرين:
Assis. Lect. Jaafer Jassim Mohammad
المجلة:
المجلة العراقية للبحوث الانسانية والاجتماعية والعلمية
تاريخ النشر:
10 مارس، 2026
مختصر البحث:
This paper provides the Marxist critical analysis of Bartleby, the Scrivener by
Herman Melville with its dramatizing of the themes of alienation, labor exploitation,
and capitalist power being experienced by the character of Bartleby and the
b…
This paper provides the Marxist critical analysis of Bartleby, the Scrivener by
Herman Melville with its dramatizing of the themes of alienation, labor exploitation,
and capitalist power being experienced by the character of Bartleby and the
bureaucratic setting he works in. The work applies the theory of alienated labor
developed by Karl Marx, and adopts the perspectives of Althusser, Lukacs and
Marcuse to analyze how passive resistance of Bartleby, who replied incessantly, “I
would prefer not to,” demonstrates the psychological and material implications of
the capitalist ideology. The monotonous clerical work, the strict order of classes, and
the incapability of the narrator to see the humanity within Bartleby described in the
story predict the dehumanizing nature of the capitalist order. This paper has
attempted to make a case by close textual analysis to argue that Bartleby is a kind of
alienated worker who isolates him/herself in a system that cannot provide emotional,
social, and existential satisfaction. His retreat ends up revealing the ethical sterility
of the capitalistic system and the lack of possibility of authentic human interaction
in the same. The study has added to the Melville studies in both placing Bartleby into
a wider context of critique of capitalism in the nineteenth century and showing how
Melville prefigures contemporary interpretations of labor, resistance, and ideological
control.
