BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER

Bartleby, the Scrivener



Bartleby, the Scrivener

The elderly narrator pledges to concern what he understands about a peculiar man, one Bartleby, a scrivener (copying clerk) who worked for him some time ago. Before he gets into Bartleby's article, he inserts himself and the other workers of his office. Of him, he states that he is a man habitually assured that the easiest route is best. Though a solicitor, he not ever proceeds before committees or judges: he sprints an enterprise considering with wealthy men's bonds, mortgages, and name deeds. He takes no risks: ""All who understand me address me an eminently protected man" (4). A short time before the centered article begins; the narrator had been nominated Master in Chancery, a place that has since been eliminated. In an apart, the narrator states that he considers the elimination of the mail a premature proceed, especially since he'd counted on the lifelong security assured by the job. His agencies of our article are on Wall Street. On one edge, the windows gaze on the central of a lightweight shaft. On the other edge, the outlook is of a clay brick wall. Two copyists and an agency young man work for the narrator at the time before Bartleby's arrival. The first copyist is Turkey. Turkey is creative in the mornings, but he's intoxicated by noon. From that issue on, he is less than creative, but the narrator's endeavors to drive him dwelling early have not ever contacted with success. When intoxicated, he's brash and over-enthusiastic. Nippers, the second copyist, are "the casualty of two bad forces  aspiration and indigestion" (9). Though not a drinker, juvenile Nippers' natural temperament is so irritable that it barely matters. But because his irritation is initiated by indigestion, his irritability wanes as the day proceeds on. Thus Turkey is creative while Nippers is foul-tempered, and Nippers is creative while Turkey is drunk. Ginger Nut, the agency young man, is a lad of twelve whose nickname arrives from the ginger nut baked cakes he fetches for the men.

Bartleboy answers to a publicity the narrator put in the paper. He is a fair and miserable-looking man: "I can glimpse that number now  pallidly tidy, pitiably reputable, and incurably forlorn" (11). He furthermore recounts Bartleby as "motionless." The narrator wants Bartleby's quietness will serene the warm tempers of the other two copyists.

The agency is split up into two rooms, one used by Nippers, Turkey, and Ginger Nut, and the other used by the narrator. Behind the narrator's table is a bust of Cicero, the large Roman author and orator. The narrator establishes Bartleby in his own room, putting him at a table by a window that examines out up on a wall. Bartleby's workstation is divided from the narrator's by a bending screen.

Part of a scrivener's job is the tedious work of double-checking a copy's faithfulness to the original. One man reads from the exact duplicate, while the other examines at the ...