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