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Bartleby The Scrivener Essay

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Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener” gives the reader a task to try to construct who Bartleby is when all the information known about him is through the title of his job “a scrivener” for the lawyer’s company on Wall-Street. The lawyer attempts to control Bartleby time after he joins him just like he has been doing with his other employees who he has already figured out but is stunned when he suddenly sees a change in his work ethic and responds with “I would prefer not to” (Melville 1489) whenever he is told to do something at the office. “Bartleby, The Scrivener” is representative of how readers tend to analyze pieces of literary works and this is shown through the lawyer and his attempts to figure out his employees, especially Bartleby, through the use of corporate control.
Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut are the other three characters/employees in the short story who have been figured out by …show more content…

Bartleby’s personality is based off of those observations because he rarely speaks about his background, his likes or dislikes or his actions. From the beginning he is described by the lawyer with words like “motionless young man…pallidly neat…incurably forlorn” (Melville 1488) or even as a figure thus making him seem unhuman-like and this continues throughout the story. Bartleby was said to have shown up on the front door of the lawyer’s office to answer one of his advertisements. The lawyer hires him on the spot because of the first impression he gets. “After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery once of Nippers” (Melville 1488). The lawyer believes to have the best interest in the company because he hires employees whose personalities will not

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