Bartleby, The Scrivener

Although Melville's story of the scrivener would ostensibly seem to be about the mysterious stranger named Bartleby, it can more accurately be described as a story about the effect that Bartleby had on those around him, and particularly upon the anonymous lawyer narrating the story.

The narrator presents himself as an unremarkable gentleman, a lawyer and employer who, in retrospection of his sixty years of life describes himself as one who has been "filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best" (3). In keeping with this philosophy, he is a lawyer who is more comfortable with paperwork than with dealing with people, or certainly, with handling confrontations of any magnitude. He is, therefore, more at ease with handling dead paper than living persons.

Throughout the story he repeatedly avoids confrontation in every possible way, but is eventually forced by Bartleby's silence...
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