In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener, the lawyer who runs the offices where Bartleby works is a reliable narrator especially if we view him from a Christian perspective. He is certainly an observant narrator. While his admitted interest in his clerks is their use to him for financial purposes, he does take time to know them well. He knows Turkey does his best work before noon, is growing old, and is pretty much useless “after twelve o’clock, meridian” (Melville 2). He is insightful enough to realize that that even though Nippers has failings and is annoying in his habits, he was not “deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment…when he chose” (Melville 3). In other words, he is insightful enough to know that Nippers is in control of himself and chooses to exhibit behavior based on his own particular moods or fancies. The lawyer is also a very descriptive and scrutinizing narrator, as his initial description of Bartleby reveals, “I can see that figure now-pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!” (Melville 4). The narrator is even insightful from a human resources perspective, as is witnessed by his organization of his offices into what would be our modern corporate “cubicle” system, “I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined” (Melville 5).
Nonetheless, the narrator is shallow to the degree that he only takes an interest in his employees based on their value to him as profit-makers. The same cannot be said for Bartleby. Bartleby seems to bring out the deeper, more spiritual portions of the lawyer’s character. Bartleby may confound the narrator since his character cannot be labeled neatly (like the three “nicknames” of the other clerks), but he also stirs deeper feelings within him, “There w
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