How Office Spaces Dehumanize the Workers: Secretary Chant by M. Piercy and Bartleby by H. Melville - Research Paper Example

The way office spaces dehumanize the workers in “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville. The two literary works above are both concerned with the working conditions in offices, the first in the twentieth century America and the second in the mid nineteenth century. When we consider these working conditions in terms of these literary works, we find that they have not improved significantly and may have in fact become worse. It is worth noting that the main characters are from both genders, that is, a woman in “the Secretary Chant” and a man in “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” This inclusion of both genders enables us to get a more diverse view of the office working conditions in the modern world and how it affects the members of these genders. Hefron (69) states that Marge Piercy turns the persona’s body literally into the work itself. She pushes her metaphor to show the dehumanizing nature of work, a daily grind of repeated duties. Most literary writers tend to take this approach, focusing on how work is dull and stultifying while rarely fulfilling. Piercy poem “The Secretary Chant” evokes an image of a woman who has lost her personal identity due to her work and Piercy’s use of metaphors throughout the poem enables the reader to deeply empathize with the central character of the poem (persona). The persona describes herself as a personification of a material object as seen in the first line of the poem, when she says “My hips are a desk” and this type of personification goes on throughout the poem as the woman who is it’s central character continues to describe herself as nothing more than a piece of office equipment. On the other hand, Melville story of “Bartleby the Scrivener” can be interpreted as a description of a man who has followed the routine of a job for so long that he finally becomes disenchanted with it and stops working. Kallay (124) describes this story as a strange vision of the horror of the unknowable projected to the reader. He further describes it as a finite human framework of unknowable blank forces, perplexingly repulsing all that is human, and avoiding interpretation by calling attention to the reversibility and infinity in practically anything that can be said about the central problem. Bartleby’s refusal to work can also be viewed as a form of protest against the dehumanizing effects of office work. Furthermore, it might be a criticism by the author of his story of the emerging importance of money in the American way of life as personified by the rise of Wall Street as the hub of financial activity in the United States. In the first six lines of the poem, each of the woman’s body parts are described and related to pieces of office equipment and it is seen that the persona does not see herself as a real woman. She describes her hair as ‘rubber bands’, her breasts as ‘wells of mimeograph ink’, and her feet as ‘bear casters’ and further describes her head as ‘a badly organized file’ to show just how entrenched she is in her work and this also reveals to the reader that no kind of social life because she would not otherwise be thinking only of her work. Her description of her body as office equipment also shows us that she spends most of her time at work and that her work has become a burden to her. The general tone of the poem is one of weariness and it may also be considered as a cry for help. The character of the hypothetical boss of the persona of the poem might be compared to that of the lawyer who is also Bartleby’s employer. The lawyer is so much a part of the mainstream office working system that he fails to understand his employee from the very beginning of the story (which he narrates) to its end. His conduct towards Bartleby is alternating between coldness, pity, and compassion. He keeps on suggesting to Bartleby ways in which he can realign himself with normal society instead of trying to investigate the root cause of Bartleby’s problem. However, in order to rid himself of Bartleby, he moves his offices elsewhere but when the next tenants of his old office ask for his help after throwing Bartleby out, the lawyer goes to his aid and even offers his own residence as a refuge. However, Bartleby refuses this offer and it is after this that the lawyer abandons him to his fate. The poem is a painful cry against the dehumanizing conditions of the America business environment. The persona in the poem is clearly unhappy with her lot in life. It is quite possible that she is also crying out against being sexually harassed by her boss or co – workers because she mentions her breasts, hips, and hair, features which attract men to women. When she compares these features to office equipment, it probably means that she has been forced to tolerate the harassment because jobs are scarce for the women in her time and she really needs this job. There is a further possibility that her describing herself as office equipment has to do with her losing her pride in being a woman. I would suggest that this be compared with Bartleby’s unwillingness to work anymore because it comes from the realization that he is losing his humanity by dedicating so much of his time to his work and forgetting to live his life. However, Bartleby’s decision to stop working comes too late because he has indeed lost his humanity and he behaves more as a machine than as a human being, just like the persona of the poem. The idea that she is not doing what she really wants to do with her life is clearly shown in the poem. Her job has become habitual such that she feels herself to be more a part of the office than an individual with a mind of her own. She has dedicated so much of her time to her work that she has lost her personal identity as shown in the last line of the poem, when she says ‘I wounce was a woman’ and this brings out a sense of nostalgia. The persona wishes for a return of the life which she used to have before she came to work at the office. It must have been very exciting compared to the life which she is currently leading, a life that is more similar to that of a machine than to that of a regular human being. This can be contrasted with when Bartleby refuses to perform even the simplest task that he is assigned, but he still spends his days at the office and after some time, he move into the office permanently. This might be interpreted to mean that he does not know how to do anything else other than being a scrivener a job which he might have done for most of his life. His moving into the office permanently may also mean that he does not know how to live any other kind of life other than that of the office. The main theme of the poem is that we should not be so much into the routine of our jobs that we forget how to live our lives because if we do so, then we shall end up losing our personality and become nothing more than machines. The poem is used to describe the feeling by the women of the nineteen thirties, when it was written, about the dehumanizing effect of their jobs. That was a time when women tended to have mostly secretarial or desk jobs with little or no chance of promotions. Furthermore, women had very few job opportunities other than those named above and in these jobs; they were treated as little more than objects and not as human beings. The description of the work of a scrivener can only be considered a distasteful profession. The lawyer seems content with his position but he delegates the difficult work of copying documents without any errors to the scriveners. It is most likely that when Bartleby came to work for the lawyer, his mental capacity to take on the work of a scrivener was at an end because his input in the work was at first very high but it later came to a sudden halt when he refused to do a task which his employer had assigned him by replying “I would prefer not to.” These five words could also be Bartleby’s way of crying out against his being used as a machine. In conclusion, it can be said that the “The Secretary Chant” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” deal with the dehumanizing effect of the office environment during two different times in the modern world. They show the negative effects of the office environment that has developed over time and the very demanding nature that they impose on those who work within it. It is a normal thing today for people to do any kind of job because there is very little choice available now that the job market is packed with potential talent. People tend to do jobs that would otherwise not have been their first choice and in this way, they end up feeling depressed and unsatisfied by their jobs. The spaces open for advances or promotions within the office are very limited and only very few people working within this environment are able to get them, and those left behind become uninspired by their work and their total output decreases. Work related stress and depression have become very common among office workers today because of the heavy workload they have to deal with every day with very little time available to them for leisure which is a very important thing for reinvigorating them. I suggest that the workforce should be allowed enough leisure time to enable them to be able to live their personal lives without interference from work. This will ensure that there are fewer cases of depression and dissatisfaction related to work. Works Cited Heffron, Jack. The Writer’s Idea Book 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Screenplays. Blue Ash, Ohio: Writer’s Digest, 2012.Print. Kallay, Katalin G. Going Home Through Seven Paths to Nowhere: Reading Short Stories by Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, and James. Budapest, Romania: Academiai Kiado, 2003. Print. Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall – street. New York: Putnam’s Magazine, 1853. Print. Piercy, Marge. “The Secretary Chant.” 1973. Print Read More