Mellville\'s Bartleby, the Scrivener Melville\'s

Mellville's Bartleby, The Scrivener

Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener

When reading Melville's tale of Bartleby, the narrator first describes his employees (Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut) and goes into great detail by providing a clear description of each one for his reader. This lets us know that he is good as pinpointing the different characteristics that people have as well as how they look and behave. He tells us how Turkey's face changes color at different times of the day and how his mood changed in the afternoons causing him to become inflamed and make ink blots. We know that Turkey is in his sixties the same as the narrator. Nipper, he tells us, is about twenty-five years of age and is both ambitious and a bit nervous all at once. The behavior that he describes exhibited by Nipper is what is known today as obsessive compulsive. Opposite of Turkey, Nippers was more moody during the day and more productive in the afternoons. The third employee, Ginger Nut got his nickname because of a ginger cake that Turkey and Nippers had him bring to them on a daily basis. Plus, he also ate a lot of nuts. He is about twelve years of age and was the office's errand boy.

The narrator tells us in the beginning that he cannot give us a biography of Bartleby, but this proves to be untrue. He first describes the character as neat, respectable and forlorn. As the story progresses, the Lawyer seems to predict Bartleby's demise by almost always describing him as silent or quiet. The narrator of this story seems unaware that he is accurate in his description of Bartleby as the story progresses and that he unknowingly describes the steady decline of this character.

The Lawyer was truly happy to have Bartleby in his employ in the beginning. He was unlike the others and didn't seem to have the idiosyncrasies that the other employees had. He worked day and night on copy and seemed a good worker who kept to himself. As the story progresses, the reader is lead to believe by the narrator's description of him that he is uncooperative. When asked to do a task considered a part of his job, Bartleby always responds that he would prefer not to. The narrator does not know at this point that Bartleby is slowing giving up on life. He sees him rather as an insubordinate employee and is frustrated by his behavior. He even enlists the opinions of Turkey, Nipper and Ginger Nut on what he should do with Bartleby.

He does not pick up on the fact that Bartleby is slowly declining even though his descriptions of him change on an almost daily basis. He went from thinking Bartleby was neat, respectable and forlorn to always describing him as staring that the dead wall. He didn't realize that Bartleby was attracted to the dead wall because that was the path he was headed down. The reason why our narrator probably missed the mark on Bartleby's decline is that there was no passion or fire in his responses when he declined any of the Lawyer's requests to do his job. The narrator was thrown off guard by Bartleby's non-threatening responses for which he did not really know how to handle. He mentions that he is aggravated by Bartleby's passive resistance. it's as though he could accept Bartleby's resistance if it had some fire and passion to it.

As time goes by, Bartleby begins to refuse even more work requests from our narrator. Each refusal becomes more passive and with each refusal, instead of firing him, our narrator says he becomes reconciled to Bartleby. He even tries to negotiate with him on different jobs aside from copying that he was hired to do. This only causes our narrator to reconcile himself even more to Bartleby's odd behavior by trying to become friendly with him and find out about his background. He knows that something is not quite right with Bartleby and he remains perplexed about his passive demeanor. He even at one point begins to refer to Bartleby's responses to his requests as cadaverous.

When the narrator thinks he can take no more of Bartleby's odd and passive behavior, he announces that he is moving. Even though Bartleby is using the office as his place of residence, he does not flinch at this announcement. The narrator feels badly about leaving him, but cannot seem to realize that Bartleby is just waiting out his time until his death. Bartleby's behavior shows that he is ready to die and will go out passively without a fight. He just wants to be left alone to die in peace. The Lawyer tries unsuccessfully to get Bartleby to confirm to his standard of behavior and it does not work.