The Lacanian Manifestation of the Real in Silence, Absence, and the Collapse of Meaning in the Story Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

The present study offers a Lacanian psychoanalytic reading of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener by focusing on the relationship between silence, refusal, and the crisis of meaning. Unlike previous Lacanian interpretations that have mainly examined Bartleby as a figure of alienation, resistance, or the failure of language, this study specifically investigates how the interaction between the three Lacanian registers—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real—constructs the gradual collapse of the subject’s relation to language and social meaning. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the research applies Lacan’s concepts of the Symbolic order, the divided subject, lack, and the Real to analyze Bartleby’s repetitive phrase “I would prefer not to”, his withdrawal from communication, and his progressive detachment from the social system of the lawyer’s office. The findings demonstrate that the Imaginary operates through the narrator’s unsuccessful attempts to create a stable image and understanding of Bartleby, while the Symbolic is represented by the legal and administrative order of Wall Street that seeks to regulate subjects through language, law, and occupational roles. However, Bartleby’s refusal disrupts this structure and reveals the emergence of the Real as the central dimension of the narrative. His silence and repetition do not simply represent personal rejection but expose the inability of language to fully contain subjective experience. The study further shows that the movement from loss to isolation and finally death represents a gradual dissolution of the subject’s connection with the Symbolic order. Therefore, Bartleby, the Scrivener can be understood not merely as a story of individual withdrawal, but as a narrative that reveals the fundamental limits of language, meaning production, and subject formation in modern experience.

کلیدواژه ها:

Bartleby ، the Scrivener ، Jacques Lacan ، the Real ، Symbolic order ، silence and refusal