Essay On Bartleby The Scrivener

Bartleby the Scrivener is told as a first person narrative. The narrator in the story does not identify his name, however readers are aware he is a lawyer. His career as a lawyer is an important characteristic needed to enhance the story. As a lawyer he needs copyist to assist in the production of copying his legal documents. The lawyer has three copyists already under his employment at the beginning of the story. It is upon the employment of a fourth copyist that the story begins to unfold. The narrator begins his story by suggesting he has had plenty of ordinary encounters with copyist throughout his career who’s stories he could tell but he chooses to focus on the story of Bartleby. It is evident from the beginning that the lawyers encounter with Bartleby was anything but ordinary as suggested in his statement, “I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few a passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or heard of” (Melville 293). The narrator proceeds to inform the reader that his story of Bartleby is only a recollection of “What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby” (Melville 297). Therefore, right from the beginning it is understood the narrator does not have the necessary information needed to produce an actual biography of Bartleby. This becomes important to the characterization of Bartleby as well as the development of the relationship shared between the narrator and

However, in the narrator’s statement, “At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing”, it is evident Bartleby’s behavior begins to change (Melville 301). The narrator emphasizes that Bartleby “wrote on silently, palely, mechanically” (Melville 301). This description of Bartleby’s performance is the foundation to understanding Bartleby’s behavior throughout the remainder of the story. Bartleby’s behavior changes when