“ So true, it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill.” (page 35)
The above passage taken from “Bartleby the Scrivener” I believe does a great job summing up the overall story. This specific passage focuses on human emotion and why we feel we owe others sympathy. To feel pity for someone, as the narrator did for Bartleby, is a normal human emotion. When we feel our luck is better than others’, such as a house to live in, a car to drive, a loving family, etc., we feel we owe them something. This something is the energy and effort it takes one to feel and emotion for said other person. Evaluating in our mind the blessings that we have, and this other did not, takes time and effort, even it only last a couple seconds in a thought.
The passage speaks of going beyond these simple thoughts also. Does the average person think it a crime to feel pity for another? No, unless that thought goes too far. Going too far would be for one to pride themselves in lending emotion to another. This would be an example of defacing the good samaritan law. We should never feel satisfaction, as humans, in another’s suffering or misfortunes. In the story of Bartleby the Scrivener, the narrator is battling his emotions surrounding the writer. On the one hand, his soul pities the introverted copyist, on the other, he feels so much resistance from the man, it is almost overwhelming. He wants Bartleby gone from his office and his life, once he has that satisfaction, Bartleby dies.
This is where the organic ill comes into play. The narrator’s emotions of pity for Bartleby were magnified by the fact that, he once despised the man and wished him gone. This has given him a complex that he addressed when Bartleby died, his human emotion was rendered in excess from his previous emotions of ill will towards the pitied Bartleby.
Wall Street 1929
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