Critical Analysis Of Bartleby The Scrivener

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Analysis of Bartleby, the Scrivener Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” is about a lawyer who hires a copyist, named Bartleby, who politely refuses to work. While most people would not tolerate an employee who continually prefers to not do any work, this lawyer finds it hard to let his scrivener go. Bartleby shows great achievement at copying documents and works hard all day and night. The lawyer soon discovers that Bartleby has begun to stay in the office and never leaves. After only a few days of working in the office, he expresses his preference to not work. When asked to do simple tasks he responds with, “I prefer not to.” He uses this phrase repeatedly throughout the story. The narrator is the lawyer in the story. His attitude towards Bartleby is constantly changing. The narrator expresses his attitude through many different literary elements such as; point of view-first person, diction, and tone. The main characters in this story revolves around Melville’s theme; on one hand you have Bartleby, who is lost within himself and on the other had you have the lawyer who is pursuing life with his law practice. The lawyer at first sought Bartleby as a dependable hard worker because he was always the first one …show more content…

Therefore, it is not hard to hypothesize that “Bartleby the Scrivener” was based on actual events in his life, or that the character was based on a real person the author had known. The use of the literary elements that are used in this story express many ideas and helps the reader get a better idea on how the narrator felt toward Bartleby. Melville expressed his impression that isolation is like a death of the human spirit and is very well used in this story by the characters and the setting. In this particular short story, Melville tries to convey the reader that people must not isolate and seclude themselves like Bartleby did in the

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