The narrator of this work is the unreliable lawyer. The lawyer admits in the work that he makes assumptions, so when we see other characters' actions, they are coming through his lense. This point of view increases the mystery of Bartleby's behavior.
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From its very first sentence, Melville signals to the reader that Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story in which language isn’t always meant to be taken at face value. The Lawyer, who narrates the entire story, describes himself in the first line as “a rather elderly man.” Presumably, The Lawyer knows his own age, but instead of passing that information along to the reader he chooses to …
The narrator considers Bartleby to be representative of humanity. He states, "For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam" (Melville 143). The lawyer originally places himself and Bartleby in the same context of society. “Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. Ah Bartleby, Ah Humanity.” (Melville 131) This is the key to Bartleby, for it ...
Indeed, if the narrator doesn't actively lay hands on Bartleby and throw him into the street, it's because the narrator feels sorry for the man he employs. Upon closely observing Bartleby's...
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. Bartleby doesn’t respond. The Lawyer leaves, confident that Bartleby will listen to him and vacate the premises.
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.
Story DetailsCharacters/ThemesExplanationsThe 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.Ginger-nuta 12-year-old assistant who fetches cakes for Turkey and Nippers4 more rows•Oct 11, 2021
Prior to Bartleby's entrance, the narrator describes himself as an experienced, self-possessed professional. He knows what he wants and he has acquired it. “I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best” (1).
He describes himself as a rather successful lawyer and is proud to acknowledge how dependable he is. He even describes his success in obtaining the position as a “Master of the Chancery Court” (Melville, 130-131).
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.
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.
The narrator of Bartleby is not a selfish man. Instead, he was the type of man who tried to do everything for someone who was in need.
The Narrator does this because he cannot bare to be mean to Bartleby, because he just does not have it in him to do anything negative towards him. He even tries to bribe him with extra pay for him to leave the office, rather than simply firing him.
Communication failure. Bartleby communicates efficiently with nobody. When the narrator asks him to revise the documents he copied, he responds with a phrase that frustrates everyone in the Herman Melville's story. The phrase “I would prefer not to” becomes a leitmotif throughout the story.
Characterized as a symbolic fable of self-isolation and passive resistance to routine, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" reveals the decremental extinction of a human spirit.
Through the tragic death of Bartleby the author have profound realizations about life. At the end of the novel, Bartleby was handed over to the police who had removed Bartleby to the Tombs as a vagrant. The author visited Bartleby in the prison and told the grubman to arrange all pleasant things for Bartleby.
Below you will find the important quotes in Bartleby, the Scrivener related to the theme of Isolation and the Unreliability of Language.
In the midst of the climactic sequence, The Lawyer abruptly stops telling the story of Bartleby’s passive resistance, which at this point is leading the scrivener to waste away in prison because he refuses to eat any food, and instead The Lawyer says that “imagination” on the part of the reader should be good enough to envision Bartleby’s end.
From its very first sentence, Melville signals to the reader that Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story in which language isn’t always meant to be taken at face value. The Lawyer, who narrates the entire story, describes himself in the first line as “a rather elderly man.” Presumably, The Lawyer knows his own age, but instead of passing that information along to the reader he chooses to describe himself as elderly—but he doesn’t just leave it at that, he calls himself “rather elderly.” It’s the “rather” that makes this opening sentence as nonspecific as it is. It is entirely unclear without context what “rather elderly” means—is The Lawyer a middle-aged man who is being modest? A man near the very end of his life trying to be humble? Or is he simply a man in the midst of old age, not quite at the end, but further from his first breath than his last? The reader cannot know for certain the answer to any of these questions that the first sentence raises, because Bartleby, the Scrivener is told from the perspective of an unreliable—and often unspecific—narrator. For example, The Lawyer never tells the reader his own name, and only refers to his employees other than Bartleby by their nicknames: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. So, the point-of-view of the story is in itself an example of language failing to create a perfect two-way relationship between storyteller and listener, between reader and writer.
Reason uses language as its mode of communication, and, like two negotiators who speak different languages, The Lawyer is entirely unable to understand anything about Bartleby by talking with him because Bartleby refuses to engage with him on common logical ground.
The story implies, then, that when he’d had too much of the dead letter office, Bartleby came to work at The Lawyer’s office to try the exact opposite —as a scrivener, Bartleby copied letters. But, as the story shows, that, too, didn’t fulfill the kind of communication Bartleby was seeking, perhaps because language is an inherently imperfect ...
The reader cannot know for certain the answer to any of these questions that the first sentence raises, because Bartleby, the Scrivener is told from the perspective of an unreliable—and often unspecific—narrator.
Later, when The Lawyer is adamant that he must fire Bartleby and find a family member to whom he can pawn off the responsibility of caring for Bartleby, The Lawyer finally pleads with Bartleby to be “a little reasonable.”. Bartleby replies that he “…would prefer not to be a little reasonable.”.
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.
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 Lawyer’s storytelling is, in itself, an example of language failing to properly communicate. Active Themes. The Lawyer then states that he is a lawyer, and describes his business as focusing around “rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title deeds.”.
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 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 ...
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 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.
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.
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.
The narrator in “Bartleby the Scrivener” is an elderly man who has experience and feels that he knows himself. He states he is “a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.”. He knows what his principles in life are and has decided that he should live with as little conflict ...
The narrator thinks that he is the one who can help Bartleby and save him from other employers who might mistreat Bartleby. When Bartleby’s actions begin to affect the office’s reputation, the narrator still does not want to confront the situation. Instead of removing Bartleby, the narrator leaves.
But even though the narrator tries to move forward, Bartleby still haunts him. When Bartleby is imprisoned, the narrator continues to show that he is concerned about Bartleby.
The narrator continues to work with his staff, probably because he is used to these characters, and does not want to have to deal with change. He is a person who is used to regular habits. Then, Bartleby arrives and presents a situation that is unexpected and challenging. In the beginning, the narrator is satisfied with Bartleby’s work.
It is hard to tell what the true character of the narrator is, because the story is told from his point of view. He might be truly a person who is sympathetic and shows real concern for other human beings. However, the words and ways he talks about different characters, it is possible that the narrator is actually focused on himself. He does good deeds, maybe because it boosts his self-esteem. Regardless of what his real intentions are, the narrator’s experience with Bartleby certainly affects his view of life.
The narrator is probably shocked by Bartleby’s replies, and this makes his life completely out of routine. First, the narrator tries to reason with himself, and does not fire Bartleby, saying, “He is useful to me.”. He wants to show that he, the narrator, is a person who cares.