The lawyer doesn't fire Bartleby after he declines to work, instead he gives Bartleby another chance. The lawyer preference to remain calm shows that he chooses to stray from confrontation. Bartleby continuous refusal to work leads to him being fired, but he refuses to leave.
The Lawyer believes he is doing a good, Christian thing by allowing Bartleby to continue existing in his office. However, Bartleby's presence soon begins to draw the notice of some of the Lawyer's clientele, and he decides that Bartleby is bad for business.
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 ...
The lawyer tried to get rid of Bartleby by moving offices. This attempt worked because Bartleby just stayed in the office.
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).
The lawyer acts quite contrary to what one would expect, especially from a lawyer. He appears to be calm and almost non-irritable by Bartleby's responses.
The Narrator decides, rather irrationally, that instead of forcing Bartleby to leave the office, he will pack up his whole practice and move to another building, just to escape.
The Lawyer: The narrator of the story is a gray-haired Wall Street lawyer. He is the protagonist of the story because the plot is driven by his problem and goal. He has two major conflicts which drive the story. The first is his outer conflict with Bartleby.
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.
Bartleby began staying in the building even after the lawyer moved his business. The next man that moved his business into the place said that Bartleby was the lawyer's responsibility and he had to do something about him. Bartleby was eventually arrested. The scivener's job was to copy legal documents by hand.
That is why Bartleby’s behavior is not because of his madness but because of his strength and power, which he uses to live. When he refuses the Law...
Melville tries to prove that Bartleby has his principles and cannot betray them. That is why he refuses to accept aid from the Lawyer because he th...
That is why he refuses to accept aid from the Lawyer because he thinks that this aid will destroy his principles and his life. Of course, every per...
This irony of the text has led some critics to argue that the story of Bartleby is itself a dead letter that The Lawyer has written to a dead man t...
(full context) That day, The Lawyer heads to the prison to attest to the fact that Bartleby is an honest, but... (full context) On his way out, a man (The Grubman) stops The Lawyer and asks if Bartleby is his friend.
(full context) Once he’s alone in the office, The Lawyer determines that Bartleby must be eating , dressing, and even sleeping in the office.
A few days later, with the other employees absent, The Lawyer asks Bartleby to carry letters to the Post Office, but Bartleby declines, forcing The Lawyer ... (full context) Six days later, Bartleby remains in the office. The Lawyer offers Bartleby the 20-dollar bonus and tells him he must go.
As when he debates about whether to keep Bartleby employed, he often exhibits a tension between capitalistic pressure and Christian charitable morality , a tension many Americans were facing in the urbanizing economic boom of the mid-1800’s.
Nippers enters the office, overhears Bartleby’s words, and calls him a stubborn mule. The Lawyer says he would “prefer” that Nippers withdraw from the room, which he does. The Lawyer ... (full context)
As with the character of Bartleby, the reader is told little to nothing about The Lawyer’s personal life or family history, leaving the reader open to put themselves in The Lawyer’s shoes.
Next, The Lawyer details his employee Nippers, who is also a scrivener. Nippers is about twenty-five years old,... (full context) However, despite these issues, The Lawyer considers Nippers a useful employee as a scrivener, as he is a good dresser, which... (full context)
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.”
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.
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 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.
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.
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.”.
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.
At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light.
Although he never knows exactly why Bartleby stops working, the narrator finds out at the end that Bartleby once worked for the Dead Letter Office, a place where lost letters end up. The narrator speculates that there was something so depressing about the futility of missed communication that the work broke Bartleby's spirit, making all effort seem futile.
The narrator tells us he would have fired Bartleby right away "had there been any thing ordinarily human about him." He keeps him on partly because he is perplexed by him and later because he pities him and identifies an opportunity to be good and charitable. The story traces the evolution of the narrator's feelings about Bartleby and his own personal responsibility toward him.
The depressing nature of the dead letters office seems to have seeped into Bartleby by the time he comes to work for the narrator. He has no life outside work - he doesn't even seem to have a home outside work. However, he must have realized how pointless the work is; just like the time put into those dead letters had become pointless. And so, he starts to refuse to do things. Bartleby has found work to be insignificant. And because he has nothing but work, he will soon find life to be insignificant. By refusing to do the work, he is making a stand against a society that has placed so much importance on it. Unfortunately, he is also dooming himself.
First of all, Bartleby does not exactly "refuse" his work; instead, he repeatedly insists that he "prefers" not to do it. At first Bartleby "gorges himself" on his work and labors "silent, palely, mechanically." It is never clear why Bartleby's attitude toward his work changes—his motives are ambiguous, and this...