... forget about the strange Scrivener. He is soon hounded by a lawyer, and it appears no one can get Bartleby to leave the building. At this point, the narrator is a little more sympathetic with Bartleby, because he has realizes that he is the only one who knows who Bartleby is. When Bartleby is finally escorted to the "Tombs" by the police, the narrator finally accepts ... Bartleby's strange disposition, and he pays the "Grub-Man" to be polite to and feed Bartleby. He has accepted Bartleby as a liability, and somehow feels responsible for him. The fact that Bartleby used to work in the de...

• Word Count: 254
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... the same for him and it is understandable when, a few weeks into the job, he starts "preferring" not to do the work. Melville gives us no explanation for Bartleby's actions either at the beginning or the end of the book, that is, until the last paragraph. When the narrator tells us a "rumor" he has heard. " ... The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington... Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?" The answer is that no, dead letters ... and dead men sound nothing alike and that Melville is trying to create an answer to wh...

• Word Count: 508
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... unreasonable behavior too, in his efforts to become famous among the bright lights of New York. As opposites attract, similar people, as Bartleby and the narrator are, repel. Bartleby ruins the narrators life and has his own come crashing down too. "Prefer not to- continue reading if one desires, but that ... anyone appel to it. It had seemed that his employment at the dead letters office had caused him to view life with a bias. Bartleby probably "prefer not to- because he had seen so repetitively death staring him in the face at the dead letter office that he knew ... ways after twelve...

• Word Count: 576
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the world for himself. His prior job at the Dead Letter Office at Washington that is mentioned at the end of the story gives some insight as to why Bartleby has such a weird behavior and acted the way he did. He is a poor scrivener for a Wall Street lawyer, and his function in his workplace is ... of these are his use of the scenery, his description of the type of labor performed, and the personalities of his characters. Throughout the story, however, Bartleby was seen by the head of the law office as someone deprived of everything, which made him feel a sense of urgency throughout the s...

• Word Count: 594
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the objective and subjective, so swings the theme from comedy to tragedy. Regardless of the two perspectives from which Herman Melville relates the story of Bartleby, the telling of a tragic story with humorous subjectivity, the story's plot and outcome determines the categorization. In fact, had Melville not peppered ... for his troubling behaviour. At that point, Melville introduces his first bit of comic relief, enlisting the audience's empathy in stating, "To befriend Bartleby; to humour him in his strange wilfulness will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what wil...

• Word Count: 925
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the door open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now-pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby. I should have started before that ground glass folding doors divided my premises into 2 parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other myself. It is a very dull, wearisome ... , and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that, to some sanguine temperaments, it would be altogether intolerable. I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with ...

• Word Count: 2205
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School