Bartleby The Scrivener Response

“Bartleby, the Scrivener” is about a lawyer, the narrator, who prides himself in taking in employees who have quirky traits. At the beginning of the story, he employees three men, Turkey, Nippers, and Gingernut, are the names they are known as. Turkey is an older man who drinks heavily during his lunch break, Nippers is younger but described by the narrator as overly ambitious, and Gingernut, is a young boy who runs errands for the office. Turkey and Nippers are scriveners, and the man named Bartleby is hired as a third Scrivener. Bartleby is liked by the lawyer because he is very sedate and respectful. These scrivener’s run copies, and proofread documents for the lawyer, essentially, they do very mundane work daily, in a repetitive fashion. Bartleby begins rejecting his responsibilities at work, stating, “I would prefer not to.” The lawyer gives him a few days and tries again, with the same response, which he responded by trying to persuade his employee to do his work through reasonable reasons. Continuingly he refuses, and the narrator, is forced to slowly accept there is nothing he can do to help Bartleby. The lawyer begins taking him in as his responsibility, giving him multiple chances to do his job, and even accepts him living there, but when enough is enough he gives him six days to leave the office. At the end of his six days, the lawyer gives him his wages plus some extra cash to find somewhere to live. Eventually, his moral character won’t allow him to kick Bartleby out, to the point he picks up his business and moves. Still, Bartleby will not leave the prior office space. He hardly speaks, if he does it is to state something along the lines of, “I’d prefer not…” and he just sort of stares blankly with no

The lawyer’s office and general surroundings are presumably in an office building which is in a city. Inside his office there are two sides one with Turkey and Nippers. The other side has the lawyer and Bartleby who are separated by a screen. In this story, the setting is important because Bartleby in particular and the other people in the office as well are trapped in by other buildings and screens.

As the story of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is told, the narrator’s view of him constantly changes, the narrator debates with himself over Bartleby’s actions and the correct response to take. Bartleby’s influence over the office manifests itself through the narrator’s inner frustration. The narrator wrestles with a courteous but uninterested worker. He finds himself lost when confronted with Bartleby’s presence. The narrator’s frustration indirectly puts Bartleby in control. Bartleby can recognize that his behavior causes the narrator to become aggravated and can allow Bartleby to get what he wants. Examples being how he wants a place to stay, and not to have to read through copies, share personal information, or generally take orders from his

In the film the narrator and Bartleby had almost equivalent imitations to the characters in the story. Although the film did mimic the employees Nippers, Turkey, and Ginger Nut there were some differences. In the film, the employees’ names are Ernie, Rocky, and Vivian instead. In Melville’s short story Turkey and Nippers were known to balance each other out because after twelve o’clock Turkey would be uneasy and Nippers would be calm. However, before twelve o’clock it would be the opposite. This was not represented in the film because instead Ernie and Rocky had negative characteristics that remained throughout the entire film without much attention. The character Ginger Nut was loosely emulated by the character Vivian in the film. In contrast to Ginger Nut being an innocent child, Vivian was a woman that had sexually inappropriate

It is both an unarguable and undesirable fact that we live in a society completely remote from our fellow man. There is no longer a sense of community between friends and neighbors — no brotherhood in the presence of coworkers in the commercial workplace. Even the higher, spiritual presence that had once bound together all things in worship and praise has faltered in the face of this profound apathy. It is not that mankind has lost its ability to communicate — modern technology provides us with the ability to speak to one another over tremendous lengths and sustain friendships in staggering amounts. The reason for this chasm of communal indifference stems from man's lost desire to understand one another, as well as the divine presence around

The narrator in Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener” is put in a tough position as he hires a new scrivener, Bartleby. I sympathize more with the narrator as he is simply trying to go about his job while Bartleby’s troubled state and disobedience proves to he a hassle. Initially, Bartleby produced extraordinary work but then slowly declined to producing nothing. Being a scrivener proved a exhausting and demanding job but when asked to look over copies Bartleby would reply that he “prefers not to”. Most bosses in the position of the narrator would simply fire Bartleby but the narrator simply stops asking Bartleby to do any work as he cares about Bartleby’s well being. When the narrator finds Bartleby living in the office he says, “My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity.

In nearly all situations of life, we find ourselves faced with the familiar face of a blank wall: Ominous, judging, begrudging walls. Some tend to be symbolic; others tend to be quite literal, both cases leaving us puzzled at how to get around such an obstruction. In Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” the title character faces quite a similar dilemma. All throughout the story, Bartleby faces an assortment of walls, most notably a blackened brick wall right outside his office window. This wall becomes a preoccupation for him, leaving him in what one can only call “a dead-wall reverie” (Melville 17).

The lawyer portrays his self-interest when he moves his office and abandons Bartleby, due to his negative affect on the business. Because Bartleby continues to annoyingly dawdle around the old office, the lawyer attempts to rid the building of Bartleby, for the lawyer is "fearful of being exposed" (1201) and criticized by the public. Clearly, the lawyer speaks to Bartleby in hopes of relieving himself from any

The story of Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne occurs in the 1600’s and takes place in Salem, a town located in the northeastern side of Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony that was established by the Puritan settlers. Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville, is set in New York in 1853 in a law office staffed with peculiar men. Both stories have some prejudice aspects. The definition of prejudice is “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience” (“Prejudice”). In Young Goodman brown the issues of prejudice center around the preconceived ideas of evil and witches. Young Goodman Brown is allegorical because it is about a man who is put

When workers bring up their boss in conversation, words like intimidating or hard-nosed might be tossed around. Also, any good employee knows to look busy when their boss is around and to be on their best behavior. Bartleby, in Bartleby The Scrivener did not abide by these office rules many of us follow. Bartleby was a scrivener for a law office on Wall Street. In the beginning days of Bartleby’s new job as a copier, he exceled greatly surpassing his fellow co-workers. This inspirational work ethic soon turned sour when Bartleby refused to do any work at all around the office. Lack of discipline from the boss of the law office turned Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” into a much larger problem. The boss being such a pushover

Have you ever seen a person so disconnected from society and from what is considered to be normal that he or she made you question their sanity? If so, you could relate with the lawyer in the story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” In this story, the narrator, who is a lawyer, has a simple man named Bartleby respond to a job opening as a scrivener. Unbeknownst to the lawyer, Bartleby did not act in the manner the lawyer would have expected. Bartleby is so outside of what is expected that it is almost as if he had died and no longer had to live up to society’s standards. In this story, Bartleby is portrayed as a lifeless zombie and is alone with nowhere to go, no one to see, nowhere to be, and no purpose to live for.

In the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” which was written by Herman Melville, the character named Bartleby is a very odd, yet interesting individual. In the story, Bartleby is introduced when he responds to a job opening at the narrator’s office. Although there is no background information given about him, it becomes very apparent that he will be the antagonist in this story. Unlike the usual image put on the antagonist, Bartleby causes conflict with a very quiet and calm temperament. This character’s attitude, along with the fact that he is a flat and static character, makes him a very unique antagonist, and this fact is shown through the way other characters approach and deal with his conflict.

“Bartleby the Scrivener,” a short story by Herman Melville,b describes the narrator’s experience employing an introverted and seemingly isolated scrivener in his office on Wall Street, the financial district of New York. However, the idea of “Wall” Street can be read more literally, seeing as the scrivener, Bartleby, seems to find himself constantly surrounded by walls. Bartleby is walled in, not only by physical walls, but by walls he puts up himself in order to preserve his isolation, and by the pressures of the capitalistic society he is forced to live in.

But before he made that decision, he had an epiphany that struck him as his thoughts became more vivid with the reasons why Bartleby would act in such a way that was not acceptable (2016). At that very moment, the lawyer became self-aware of the whys and wherefores of Bartleby's actions (2016). He learned Bartleby was homeless and did not have a place to call home (2016). Instead, he made the lawyers office his work and home (2016). He realizes Bartleby was not only a hard-working man, getting the documents done on time, but that was only because he had nothing else to look forward to rather than to focus on his work and rest at his office throughout the night while doing it all over again the next day

Also, Turkey and Nippers were actual copyists, but the young Ginger Nut is the "promising lad as an office boy." They are teaching "Ginger Nut" the ropes and hope that he also becomes a copyist. Ginger Nut isn't a perfect candidate because he is an aspiring writer, but mainly because he is a male, and would, therefore, fit the standard set by society and the narrator.