This tendency to see the employees as tools is expressed further by the way the lawyer addresses his workers. Although the lawyer agrees to use his employees’ nicknames that are “mutually conferred upon each other by [his] three clerks,” and that they are “ deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters”.(Melville 2) However the problem with these nicknames is that they are actually a way of removing another personal trait, which is their real name, that would make them more human. Nickname was not the only way that the lawyer had addressed them, he sometimes also referred to them by the type of work they do. For example, Turkey and Nipper send Ginger Nut out “ frequently for that peculiar cake- small, flat, round,” …show more content…
However, capitalism makes it so that one’s value is only measured based on one’s output or its productivity. If one is not giving any output, then this person is considered worthless. This statement could be evidenced in the story by the fourth employee Bartleby when he started to refuse to do any work as he kept on saying “I would prefer not to” when he was being asked again and again to do his job. After many failed attempts for the lawyer to get Bartleby either start working or out of his office, the lawyer finally decides to “ quit him” (Melville 23) and moved his office somewhere else. Melville also showed that there is no place for the non-worker in a capitalist society to go when Bartleby has been arrested and sent to jail as a vagrant. In reality, all of the homeless and other people that either cannot get a job or does not have the ability to work shared the same fate as Bartleby that is “Either you must do something, or something must be done to you.” (Melville 25)Therefore in the story, Bartleby ended up in jail and died through starvation. Through the situation faced by Bartleby, the dehumanization effect of a capitalist society have on individuals was shown again by Melville arguing that one’s circumstances are not taken into account in a capitalist society, and the only thing that is important to this kind of society is how useful one