Bartleby The Scrivener Analysis

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville, published in 1853, tells a story about a successful lawyer man who have three scriveners in his office: Turkey, Nippers and Bartleby. The story hovers around the mysterious Bartleby who 'prefers' not to do some things, which ends up to his death in the prison leaving the lawyer in melancholy. The Successful lawyer is the narrator in the text; he is a first person narrator who uses the pronoun "I" a lot. Indeed, the narrator is both intradiegtic and homodiegetic which means that the narrator takes part in the story and is a character in the story respectively. The narrator narrates the story from his own perspective and he describes himself, the other characters and the events but actually he
The fact that the narrator starts defining himself by his age instead of his name makes the reader takes him less seriously, "I Am a rather elderly man" (Melville.1). Using the word 'rather' makes the reader feels that the narrator may hide some detail he does not want to tell. The absence of the narrator's personal name is another indication for his unreliability. The fact that the scriveners call the narrator 'Sir' without mentioning his name causes the reader to doubt the narrator's honesty and reliability. The narrator is called by 'Sir' several times, for instance:" “With submission, sir,” said Turkey" (Melville.7). Moreover, as I mentioned before, the narrator is limited due his lack of information about Bartleby's life. The narrator does not know about Bartleby's history, personal life or even where he was born, for example: " “Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?” (Melville.100) . Therefore, the reader questions how much the narrator can be reliable if he claims that he is a successful lawyer while hiring a person without knowing anything about him. The lack of information makes the reader becomes confused and skeptical about the