Loading Likes... While reading this story, I was struck by the recurring references to food. Upon initial introduction, the nicknames Turkey and Ginger Nut stood out as obvious references, and even Nippers is characterized with his indigestion. While Ginger Nut roots in his consistent task of collecting cakes for the office, I found that Turkey’s nickname was curious as it seemed to evoke his overall grubbiness and haughty personality.
The narrator regards Turkey with disdain at moments, saying, “I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating houses” (Melville 1473). While Turkey remains set in his ways, the narrator takes issue with his habits, bothered by “his moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then” (1474). Such potent food imagery connotes a type of greediness and obnoxiousness that forms the image of the narrator’s workers prior to Bartleby. Amid the chaos of the food habits and changing moods of his workers, the narrator finds a moment of reprieve in Bartleby as a less forward and enigmatic addition to his day.
In fact, instead of physical food, the narrator remarks that instead, Bartleby acted “as if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion” (1475). Such food-focused language reinforces a pleasant shift from the grossness of actual consumption to Bartleby’s dedication to his work compared to the others. However, as the narrator continues to interact with Bartleby and discover more about his more than reluctant nature, the food references wane. While the narrator remarks that he had never seen Bartleby actually eat, Bartleby becomes more and more distinct and inhuman compared to the rest of the workers.
Ultimately, the lack of hunger or drive represented by Bartleby’s reluctance to get dinner, as distinguished by the grub-man in prison, presents Bartleby’s stationary and immoble character. Never as greedy or intense as the other workers, perhaps the comparison to food presents how Bartleby lacked the capacity to work on Wall-Street while he instead just wanted to survive and get by. His desire to remain stationary by the end distinguishes him from the cut-throat nature of the other copiers, who were quick to call him bizarre and encourage the narrator to cut him as dead weight.
Even the narrator acknowledges that Bartleby “lives without dining” (1494), reaffirming the notion that Bartleby lacked the tendency to indulge himself more than just exist as a passive and enigmatic presence in the narrator’s office.