In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener, Bartleby presents a major problem for the narrator lawyer who utilizes human beings who, though they may be eccentric and insolent, like Turkey and Nippers, do their job adequately and do it for low pay. Bartleby, however, resists all efforts of the lawyer narrator to understand him or draw him out. Instead of doing his job and occasionally annoying the narrator, as do Nippers and Turkey, Bartleby responds to many questions, tasks and duties with the response “I would prefer not to” (Melville 5). The lawyer is completely involved in the capitalistic mode of conduct. He is very orders, he enjoys separating himself from his scriveners which symbolizes his superior position and status compared to them. He tries to control his emotions and he is very money oriented. This is why he puts up with the insolence of some of his scriveners because they do their job well and expect little pay in return for it. Bartleby, on the other hand, is a constant source of irritation to him because he is a man that will not conform to the job as the other scriveners do. He chooses, instead, to do his job well but refuses to take on many of the tasks the lawyer asks him to do. The more Bartleby refuses to conform to the habits and customs of the office, the more perplexed and determined the narrator becomes to try and understand Bartleby’s seeming withdrawal from everything but his work. Yet, this is ironic because it is precisely the nature of the work and the narrator’s attempts to isolate Bartleby with all his power that have produced such an inscrutable, isolated figure, “I placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy backyards, and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some
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