The double meaning of the relationship between the narrator and Bartleby must be taken into consideration considering the environment the narrator describes he lived in for most of his adult life. His employees, the only people he introduces as his entourage, appear to be suffering from the alienating effects of their profession.
The Lawyer gives Bartleby all the money the scrivener is owed, plus the 20-dollar bonus. He tells Bartleby that he wishes him well, and that if he can be of service to the scrivener, Bartleby shouldn’t hesitate to contact The Lawyer.
After questioning what Bartleby means by this phrase, The Lawyer gets up, walks over to Bartleby, and again tells his employee to come and compare the sheet with him for errors, thrusting the sheet over the screen towards his employee. But Bartleby doesn’t take it, and instead repeats that he “would prefer not to.”
The unnamed narrator (who we will refer to as The Lawyer) introduces himself as a “rather elderly man” and establishes that he has had much contact with a set of men that have never before been written about—scriveners, or law-copyists.
The Lawyer is the unnamed narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener." He owns a law firm on Wall Street, and he employs four men as scriveners, or copyists: Turkey, Nippers, Ginger Nut, and Bartleby. The Lawyer is about sixty years old. He is level-headed, industrious, and has a good mind for business.
Story DetailsCharacters/ThemesExplanationsBartlebya new scrivener at the law office and the story's antagonistThe lawyerthe protagonist and narrator of the storyTurkeyan old scrivener who is the same general age as the lawyer, 60Nippersan ambitious scrivener with a fiery personality.4 more rows•Oct 11, 2021
The narrator recognizes that he has taken on the “easiest way of life” and characterizes himself as an “unambitious lawyer [who does] a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title deeds”.
Character Analysis Of Bartleby He is now an older man with a job for a family. The lawyer attempts to ease Bartleby back into reality because it assures him that he has not wasted his own life. From this moment on the lawyers conflict with Bartleby will only grow the rising tension between the lawyer and his own past.
As a narrator, the lawyer is unreliable because the reader cannot always trust his interpretation of events. The lawyer, as he himself admits, is a man of “assumptions,” and his prejudices often prevent him from offering an accurate view of the situation.
With the sudden changes of Bartleby, the Lawyer feels overpowered, and it is like he does not have any power over his employees like Bartleby. Marcus explains that Bartleby is a psychological double for the Lawyer. The author says that Bartlebys power over the Lawyer quickly grows as the story progresses (Marcus 1).
Death and Its Trappings The Narrator has a chilling vision of Bartleby as a corpse in his winding sheet, which evokes both sympathy and fear in himself and in his readers, and even when Bartleby is alive (technically), he has a certain undead quality about him.
The lawyer who narrates the story is initially glad to have Bartleby as an employee because he does good work and does it for long hours, but the lawyer wishes Bartleby had a less gloomy demeanor....
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street" is a darkly comic short story that satirizes the nature of work and its role in ascribing meaning to our lives. The comedy in the story also raises...
Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut are introduced before Bartleby to show how tolerant the narrator generally is of eccentric and somewhat unproductive employees. For example, Nippers is irritable in...
We never find out definitively why Bartleby shuts down and decides he "prefers not to" do any work whatsoever. However, the sympathetic and kind-hearted lawyer employer who takes an interest in him...
Near the end of Bartleby, the Scrivener, Bartleby dies in the Tombs prison, where has been sent because of his homelessness. Bartleby dies of starvation in prison because he prefers not to eat...
Turkey and Nippers are copyists. Turkey is approaching 60 years old...
According to the eNotes Study Guide: "Bartleby the Scrivener" was written by Herman Melville in 1853 and was first published in Putnam's Magazine in the November/December issue of that year....
Even before his usefulness wanes, The Lawyer is already skeptical of Bartleby because he doesn’t take joy in his work. However, because the office is so personally disconnected, he chooses not to discuss this with Bartleby at all. Additionally, The Lawyer stating that an important part of a scrivener’s job is to correct copies is in itself an example of the imperfection of language: even those whose job it is to write exact copies all day often make mistakes.
The Lawyer learns some of Bartleby’s qualifications —the most he learns about Bartleby in the entire story —and he fails to share it with the reader (another example of language being unreliable). The layout of the office is a clear example of the disconnected modern workplace: the boss sits in a separate room from his employees, and even when he places Bartleby near him, The Lawyer puts a screen around the scrivener so that he cannot see his employee.
At first, Bartleby provides The Lawyer with an enormous quantity of writing, working nonstop all day and not pausing for lunch. The Lawyer notes that he would have been quite delighted by this, if not for the fact that Bartleby writes “silently, palely, mechanically” rather than with any delight. The Lawyer then mentions that an important part of a scrivener’s job is to re-read what they have written in order to check for mistakes. Traditionally, when there is more than one scrivener present, they help each other with their corrections, and, because it’s tedious, The Lawyer believes this is not work that someone like “the mettlesome poet, Byron,” would be willing to do.
The Lawyer trusts Bartleby fully despite not knowing anything about him, and he cannot figure out that the fact that Bartleby arrives early to and leaves late from the office is caused by his condition of living there. This epitomizes how disconnected the office is, as well as how sharing language has failed to create a close-knit bond in the office. Additionally, Bartleby’s passive resistance becomes even more controlling of the office, changing The Lawyer’s habits and leaving Bartleby’s unchanged.
Although Bartleby spends literally all of his time in the office, The Lawyer is unable to get to know him better, and the only member of the office Bartleby interacts with is Ginger Nut, a twelve-year-old boy. Though The Lawyer could potentially learn about Bartleby from his young employee, he never ventures to ask Ginger Nut about his elusive scrivener. The Lawyer’s strange thought-process about Bartleby’s diet is derived from the Theory of Humorism, and its nonsensical conclusion is another example of language (and logic) failing to illuminate the truth.
In the past, The Lawyer says that he has helped with correcting copy himself, and one of the reasons he placed Bartleby so close by was so that he could easily call him over to go through this correcting process. However, on the third day (The Lawyer thinks) of Bartleby’s employment, The Lawyer hastily calls Bartleby over to correct a paper he is holding. He holds the copy out for Bartleby to take, but Bartleby never comes to his desk, instead calling out from behind the screen, “I would prefer not to.”
Next, The Lawyer details his employee Nippers, who is also a scrivener. Nippers is about twenty-five years old, has yellow complexion, wears a mustache, and, in The Lawyer’s view, is “victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion.”.
The double meaning of the relationship between the narrator and Bartleby must be taken into consideration considering the environment the narrator describes he lived in for most of his adult life. His employees, the only people he introduces as his entourage, appear to be suffering from the alienating effects of their profession. The head of the office seems to be perfectly aware of their flaws and wise enough to make the best use of their hindered capabilities. On the other hand, he lives and works in the same circumstances therefore, making himself subject to similar alienation effects.
Barley is frightening to the narrator because he highlights the meaninglessness of work, something the narrator believed in. Once a message is taken out of context, it may become useless for those who are trying to discover its meaning. In this case, one accepts Weinstock’s proposal to consider “Bartleby the Scrivener” a mystery story. His conclusion would be that not only phrases, but also human beings taken out of context are likely to become useless or, otherwise meaningless.
Furthermore, he portrays himself as a person who finds a way to go through life avoiding complications, perfectly just into the rules and laws of society, and always choosing the easiest way out of any potential problem. He further describes his lack of ambition as a virtue that helped him keep safe and sound through the years and retainage of wisdom, speared of any turbulence .
The development of the narration gives the reader the possibility to make all kinds of speculations, thus bringing the story closer to being a mystery story. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock starts his analysis of the story with the consideration that it is indeed meant as a modern mystery short novel, pointing out the meaninglessness of some human actions: the conclusion or lack thereof of Bartleby’s points to the unsettling realization that every letter is potentially a “dead letter”- that, as famously proposed by Jacques Derrida, a letter can always not arrive at its destination meaning can always go astray. If this is an inherent possibility of language, then “Bartleby” finally raises the question of what is meant to be.
In closing, other well-known writers such as, David Shusterman agree that Herman Melville did not write the short story with a “hero” in mind. Shusterman feels like even though there is not hero identified, a character to take note of is the lawyer narrator. The narrator goes out of his way to appear like the good guy but his intentions may not be so pure. He wants to be the hero but many believe he takes on a more antagonist role.
Both Bartleby and the hunger artist are distinguished by a sense of hopelessness and searching. The characters, the former silently, the other in self-revelation, express their need to find a place to belong.
The scrivener, Bartleby is an unaccountable man as described by the narrator whom at the time of the events that took place a Master in Chancery.
The double meaning of the relationship between the narrator and Bartleby must be taken into consideration considering the environment the narrator describes he lived in for most of his adult life. His employees, the only people he introduces as his entourage, appear to be suffering from the alienating effects of their profession.
So when Bartleby appears at the office and interviews for the job, the narrator thinks that Bartleby will tone the office down some because he was so different than the others. Everyone else worked in a separate location to the narrator, so Widmer believes that the narrator places Bartleby in his office so that he can control him ...
The Relationship of Bartleby and the Narrator in Bartleby, the Scrivener. Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” has provided readers and critics with enough material to speculate upon Bartleby’s condition and the message the writer intends to send through the peculiar character. Bartleby’s unique character was so mysterious ...
Barley is frightening to the narrator because he highlights the meaninglessness of work, something the narrator believed in. Once a message is taken out of context, it may become useless for those who are trying to discover its meaning. In this case, one accepts Weinstock’s proposal to consider “Bartleby, the Scrivener” a mystery story.
Furthermore, he portrays himself as a person who finds a way to go through life avoiding complications, perfectly just into the rules and laws of society, and always choosing the easiest way out of any potential problem. He further describes his lack of ambition as a virtue that helped him keep safe and sound through the years and retainage of wisdom, speared of any turbulence .
For the contemporary reader, Bartleby’s existence could have a double meaning: an alter ego for the alienated person who is living under circumstances completely different from what nature intended it to be and a choice of passive response to societies compulsiveness to adjust and submit to a strict simple but deceptive rules.
Melville’s exploration into the limitations imposed by an artificial and apparently absurd and purposeless life goes deeper into the depth of human mind and psyche. The development of the narration gives the reader the possibility to make all kinds of speculations, thus bringing the story closer to being a mystery story.