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How To Write A Brief Summary Of Bartleby

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The lawyer goes through multiple stages until he finally arrives at his final insight of Bartleby. In the beginning of the story, the lawyer describes his employees and his surroundings to set up the arrival of the strange new scrivener. He is used to men of swinging personalities, like Turkey with his afternoon fits or Nippers with his anguish over the writing desk. Bartleby turns out to be such a foreign entity that the lawyer is extremely taken aback. The lawyer’s first opinion on Bartleby turned out to be positive. Even though he appeared “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn,” Bartleby managed to accomplish great amounts of work each day. He dedicated himself to his job and never seemed to stop. This impressed the lawyer so much, and he hoped Bartleby’s work ethic and serene personality would rub off on his other two temperamental assistants. “... which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey and the fiery one of Nippers.” However, the solitude and unusually quiet manner of Bartleby unnerves the lawyer: “He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light …show more content…

The lawyer becomes annoyed and impatient with the constant denials. He can’t understand why this one individual, so devoid of emotion, could get away with not doing every aspect of a scrivener’s job. His frustration leads to the consultation of the other three employees. “It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith… Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement of his own faltering mind.” Each employee has a different opinion on what the lawyer should do with Bartleby. But no matter what anyone says or how aggravated he gets, the lawyer is so intrigued with the man that he can not let him

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When only one gentleman shows up for the job, the boss gives the strange man, Bartleby, a job as a filer. After a few days, the new employee will not listen to the boss. This extraordinary man merely states, “I prefer not to,” when requested to complete a duty. Consequently, the boss gets weary of Bartleby’s behavior and attempts to get rid of

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In Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville uses direct and indirect characterization to give a more powerful meaning to the characters and dialogue of the short story. Melville also uses appearances and names to get his descriptions across. In the story the narrator plays a key role in which he is not just the narrator but also a character. The narrator tells the story through indirect characterization.

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After reading Melville’s short story Bartleby the Scrivener, I started to think about how the story is relevant to today. Melville is able to capture the tedious and repetitious work environment of people who work in offices not only through the description of the office, but also through the interactions of the workers. In the story, Bartleby is put in an office space without a view to the outside world. Instead the lawyer positions him facing the a wall. The wall symbolizes the class difference between the two men.

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In this story, readers often debate whether the narrator is ultimately a friend or foe to Bartleby by analyzing their relationship. Through the narrator’s actions and responses to Bartleby, he poses more as a friend rather than just another tool to Bartleby’s downfall, showing how Melville uses their relationship to demonstrate the idea that despite general understandings that a

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The narrator does have a problem with the Bartleby as the following conversation shows:"[Bartleby,] would you like to re-engaging copying for some one?" "No; I would prefer not to make any change." "Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?" "There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not

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In Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, multiple foils can be observed. Foils being a contrast between two characters or even settings. However, this text will be centered on specifically two foils. The first one, the narrator being a foil of Bartleby, leading to the second foil; Nippers and/or Turkey being foils of Bartleby once again. As previously said, Bartleby the Scrivener and the narrator seem to be foils of each other.

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When the narrator is unable to figure out why Bartleby will not work for him he starts to imagine reasons. The narrator decides to conclude that Bartleby must have something wrong with his eyes because one day they “looked dull and glazed. ”(Melville 35) The narrator feels that he must have an answer to all his issues and when he is unsure, he creates the answer. Goodman Brown is conflicted by what is real.

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The Narrator justifies keeping Bartleby and ignores his internal issues with confrontation. When Bartleby refuses to do anything but copy the Narrator forgives the behavior because Bartleby asked so politely. When Bartleby refuses to work all together the Narrator allows him to stay because he thinks it is a good thing to help Bartleby. Even when the Narrator realizes the he can’t have Bartleby in his office anymore he moves offices instead of making Bartleby leave. All these acts show us that the Narrator does not know how do deal with confrontation

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