We never learn his name, but The Lawyer, who narrates the story, tells us that he is a lawyer who owns his own law practice located on Wall Street in New York City. The Lawyer’s status as both a Christian man and a business owner often forces him into internal conflict.
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The lawyer is an elderly man, an experienced attorney who has seen just about every kind of character there is to see in his long career. ... The lawyer (who …
A man with a vendetta against Fortunato because of an unexplained wrong Fortunato committed against him long ago. The narrator goes to great lengths of manipulation to secure his revenge, showing cunning and intelligence. But the undescribed original wrong, and the narrator's frantic effort to get Fortunato to react in some way as he walls him into a living tomb, raises questions …
 · At the beginning of the story, the lawyer describes himself as an older man and a person who has sought an easy path through life, although also one that makes him a good deal of money. He uses as...
Cite evidence from the text to support your response. Montresor is considered an unreliable narrator because his opinion of Fortunato is biased. Montresor feels greatly wronged by Fortunato, but the exact wrongdoing that Fortunato has committed is never clearly mentioned in the story. As a result, readers cannot comprehend or agree with ...
Ginger Nut is the the Lawyer's errand boy in "Bartleby the Scrivener." His name comes from the fact that Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby often send him to get ginger nut cakes.
Some critics think that, therefore, the Lawyer represents Melville's readers, asking Melville to write the same old fiction he had been writing all along, and Bartleby is Melville himself, replying that he would "prefer not to" and eventually withdrawing into himself and his misery.
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).
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.
The narrator is a symbol for Melville's readers, and poor Bartleby is a symbol for Melville. The narrator demands Bartleby to keep copying his work, but Bartleby has stated numerous times that he “would prefer not to”. Melville is against writing more fiction because he did not want to cheapen the means of his fiction.
Though the Lawyer admits that "nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance," he eventually comes to pity Bartleby, believing that he "intends no mischief" and his "eccentricities are involuntary." The Lawyer decides to "cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval" by determining to keep Bartleby on ...
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
An elderly scrivener in The Lawyer's office, Turkey is in good spirits and does good work before lunchtime, at which point he becomes drunk, cranky, and mostly useless. We never learn his real name, as The Lawyer refers to him only by his nickname. A twelve-year-old helper who works in the law office.
Bartleby, the Scrivener His work suffers from the onset of a mental aberration which causes him to decline direct instructions from his employer, then lapse into periods of nonconformity and self-isolation. His lean face and calm gray eyes reveal no agitation — only the intransigence that leads to the story's conflict.
This character's attitude, along with the fact that he is a flat and static character, makes him a very unique antagonist, and this fact is shown through the way other characters approach and deal with his conflict.
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.
Because Reading Test answers are always based on direct information from the passages, you should literally be able to put your finger on a place in the passage to support your answer to any given question.
CTE questions ask you to provide lines from the passage that support a given conclusion, most commonly your answer to a previous question. Here’s an example of an SAT Reading question, followed by a CTE question:
The narrator of "Amontillado" describes how the nitre is increasing as they go further in. They are now under... (full context)
They arrive at the narrator’s house, which is empty of servants, as the narrator of "Amontillado" had expected. He had told them to stay in the house, but he had said... (full context)
The lawyer is stretched and challenged by the presence of Bartleby in his life.
He reveals himself in the first few paragraphs to be someone who believes "that the easiest way of life is the best." He describes himself as "unambitious," not a trial-lawyer but a specialist in "rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds." He states that "All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man." His determination to live with as little fuss or emotional upheaval as possible will be reflected in his passivity toward Bartleby as the story progresses.
It's important that the lawyer provides us with some background information about himself, as otherwise we might not believe his remarkable story. After all, the tale of Bartleby is a most unusual one. It isn't every day that a humble clerk—or anyone else, for that matter—just gives up the ghost and sits still, refusing to move or do anything. So we need to be sure that the person telling us this unlikely story is someone we can trust and believe.
It is significant that he is a lawyer, because lawyers deal in facts and are required to be dispassionate about them. If anyone should be able to give facts about the action that follows, it should be the lawyer. If anyone should be aware of his own prejudices, it should be a lawyer. But this lawyer reveals himself to be a mass of prejudices and "preferences" about how his life should be free of "drama" or trouble of any kind. His being a lawyer and the setting being Wall Street, help situate this story as an ironic piece of fiction.
The lawyer's work and training are significant because his profession relies on curiosity as well as investigation. It is also a line of work based on logic and rationalism. Thus it makes sense that the lawyer would discover a possible logical explanation for Bartleby's disillusion in his work in the Dead Letter Office.
Montresor is considered an unreliable narrator because his opinion of Fortunato is biased. Montresor feels greatly wronged by Fortunato, but the exact wrongdoing that Fortunato has committed is never clearly mentioned in the story. As a result, readers cannot comprehend or agree with Montresor's extreme form of revenge, which actually makes readers sympathize with Fortunato. In addition, readers do not have any background on Montresor, so Montresor's sanity is questionable, considering he formulates and carries out an elaborate plan to entomb and murder someone who insulted him.
To convey the intended meaning, Poe uses symbolism throughout "The Cask of Amontillado.". Here are some examples of symbolism in the story: Poe uses the word cask to mean "casket" in the story.
A first-person narrator is a narrator who is also a character in the story. This type of narrator tells the story using first-person pronouns, which are the pronouns "I," "me" and "mine."
In summary, we can conclude that the first-person narrator is unreliable, because he has full control of the information available to the reader, and can modify it whenever he wants.
As the reader does not have access to the opinions of other characters, he can be highly influenced by the first-person narrator, who can modify the story as he sees fit and present it in the way he feels most appropriate.
The narrator says, “these are the rules and the laws; they are well made.” The reader is able to determine this is a strict society but doesn’t know yet how this will play into the story.
The narrator's father states that the narrator's strong dream "may eat you up." How does the narrator tie the events to the father's statement?
The narrator learns that the gods were actually men. He says, “...for then I knew he was a man.” This is an obvious new truth for the narrator. He must now reconcile this with what he has known previously. The narrator is quite surprised by this truth. The narrator also says that it was “hard to tell and believe.”
me-…I could not understand.” He says “-it is better the truth should come little by little.” In each of these instances, the narrator reinforces his assertions about knowledge and truth.
The narrator means that knowledge made him feel alive. He states that he was taught to “read in the old books,” and “make the old writings…” In this context, fire is associated with passion. The heart is usually equated with love, so the author is indirectly comparing knowledge to love.
The narrator is so far into his journey and has broken so many of the society’s rules and laws. It makes him all the more brave. He uses this as reason to go further and learn more. After telling of a previous incident when he ate a jar of jelly he was forbidden from eating he says “…I entered the likeliest of towers, looking for the food of the gods.”
He learns of the events through a vision or a dream. The narrator tells what he sees in the smoke of the fire; “it is what I have always seen…” Dreams and visions are tools of knowledge in this society; those chosen to possess knowledge are given that knowledge through these visions and dreams. He says, “Some will say I slept, but… I had stepped out of my body.”