Lovely Literature

I'm just as compelled with Bartleby as the lawyer is!! By the way, it really bothers me when they don't give us the name of the narrator when it is in first person. That's TWO stories in this section! Oh well...

Bartleby had a huge impact on the lawyer because he chose to tell the story about him and not about all the other scriveners he has employed in the past. The other three employees were important to show foil characterization and comic relief, but Bartleby was THE story. Heck, it was even named after him! The lawyer says he is not used to people ignoring his instruction or denying his instruction. This intrigues him when Bartleby uses his passive aggresive attitude and skirts his way around saying he doesn't actually want to do anymore work than is required of him. The lawyer is so impacted by him that he moves his own office rather than ban Bartleby or call the police on him. It would have been easy for him to call the police on him, but he was much too interested in Bartleby to let him go away. Even in prison he was connected with him and wanted to know more about him even though Bartleby just ignored him. Bartleby has a past that he will not speak of and that is what keeps the lawyer and the reader so intrigued.

I think there must be more to Bartleby than meets the eye. He is a peculiar character and he is static throughout the entire story. His behavior is motivated by the fact that he was fired from his previous job at the Dead Letter Office. Apparently something huge must have happened that put the thought into his head that he was to copy down and copy down only because he never "preferred" to do anything else. He must have been either coddled at his old job or the other extreme, terribly put down so that he was not confident in what he could do. Then again, he could just simply be lazy and literal, like those Amelia Bedelia books I used to read when I was younger.

I believe the information about the Dead Letter Office is withheld until the end so that the reader can identify whatever they believe with Bartleby. It would kill the story and give the reader a preconceived notion about Bartleby if he added that fact in earlier in the story. This background though is not near enough to describe Bartleby. He had to have gone through some kind of traumatic time to make him so passive aggressive and complacent. It's weird how a character can be so interesting and compelling even though he does not change throughout the entire story and he seems to be very flat.