The narrator of “Bartleby the Scrivener” begins the story by introducing the reader to the law office on Wall Street of which he was the manager when he first met Bartleby. The narrator describes himself as an unambitious, elderly lawyer who has enjoyed a comfortable tenure as Master in Chancery.

Lawyer

Bartleby—A Law Student’s Analysis. 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) …

Necessity drives the Narrator to hire an additional helper, Bartleby. The Narrator asks Bartleby to help him examine a copied document, but, to his astonishment, Bartleby “prefers” not to comply. Dumbfounded, the Narrator asks Nippers to complete the job instead.

The main themes of the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” by Herman Melville are isolation and the failure of maintaining an effective communication. These themes are enhanced by the motifs of routine and death.

Characterized as a symbolic fable of self-isolation and passive resistance to routine, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” reveals the decremental extinction of a human spirit.

Melville uses the dead letter office to symbolize the repetitive and dreary job that more people were doing. Bartley’s job in the dead letter office, was the reason for his depression and his loss of motivation.

Like a dead letter, Bartleby has been neglected. He has no home and no place to go. He has nothing to tie him to this world. Like the dead letter, he moved around in search of some grounding, but ended up in the place one goes when there is no where else to go.

twelve years old

The narrator in ”Bartleby, the Scrivener” is unreliable. He admits that his thoughts and perception are clouded by assumptions.

While the Narrator certainly has some issues to work through regarding communication and standing up for himself, he does have a number of admirable qualities. Foremost among them is his capacity for sympathy; the Narrator remains rather oddly sympathetic to the enigmatic and frustrating Bartleby throughout the story.

He suggests several jobs that Bartleby might try and even invites Bartleby to live with him until they figure out a better solution, but Bartleby replies that he would “prefer not to make any change” and declines the offer. The story ends with the narrator saying, “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”

Bartleby might well be the street’s only constant inhabitant. Yet though Bartleby is the street’s “sole spectator,” he sees nothing. The office in which he lives is blind on both ends, and he himself habitually stares only at a blank wall.

Turkey is so known because, as is suggested, he indulges himself too much at lunch, causing his afternooon work to suffer. Nippers is so named because he is irritable and seems unsatisfied with his position in society. Gingernut earned his name because off the treat he brings back when he is sent on errands.

twelve-year-old