After all, he was performing his main tack quite well and in a continuous manner. The second time to refuses to perform a task his boss gives him happens to be in front of all the other employees. This new situation commands immediate reaction from his part, because his very authority is questioned. By not taking action, he could open a chain of reaction and insubordination from the rest of the team. He decides to ask them for their opinion, before making any sudden decision. They respond according to their own disposition and the moment in the day. Still before noon, Turkey is still in a good disposition and suggests clemency, Nipper is in a bad mood and suggest that he fires him. The voice of innocence, Ginger Nut, expresses his conviction that Bartleby is mentally disturbed. These seem to be like voices of the narrator's alter ego. He could be thinking himself like one of the other, depending on the moment, disposition etc.
The head of the office decides to go on and keep the stubborn and curious character in his office. He suggests that, beside any other consideration, he is under the deep impression of pity, this time. He considers it a work of charity and it gives him the opportunity to feel good about himself. He is also pondering that his act of charity is not costing him much and it deserves to be done.
Their daily activities go on, but at some point he appears to be forced to take a decision and fire Bartleby. The latter chose to refuse do any work at all and thus offered him all the reasons in the world to get rid of him. An astounding discovery made on a Sunday morning will offer additional material to his case. The boss drops by the office unexpectedly and finds out that Bartleby was practically living there. Not even this revelation will make him act accordingly. The man is clearly a case of well fare and should be taken into account by professionals. He is also alienated and probably needs psychiatric assistance.
The irony is that, at some point, the boss himself seems alienated and paralyzed in his actions. He is unable to get rid of the man who became merely a piece of furniture in the office, clearly getting in the way of daily activities. Moreover, the boss and the rest of the office members are at some point under the danger of becoming infected with the strange unnamed virus that took control over Bartleby. Although they are surpassed in their capacities and in no position to offer him the proper assistance and maybe find a cure, they are still unable to react the proper way. The absurd of the situation goes beyond that, when they decide to move into another building and leave Bartleby behind instead of trying to remove him from there.
Unable to come back to this world, Bartleby will finally succumb. By the end of the play, the readers finds out that he used to work in Washington, sorting so called dead-letters. This is the only supplementary indication one gets. It could point out his source of alienation. The job appeared to be morbid and additionally, repetitive. Moreover, his nextjob one knows of, that of a scrivener seems even more dull. One knows that today, the people who work in a factory at a work line and do the same every other minute, are subject to various kinds of disorders. If Turkey found escape in beer and Nipper seemed to suffer from a bad stomach and changes in mood, Bartleby's way of dealing with the alienation and the lack of humanity in his surroundings led him to give up and choose to leave this world by refusing to act.
He later finds out that Bartleby has refused to leave the old office. Eventually, Bartleby is thrown into jail, where he perishes, after having refused to eat. Towards the end of the story, the narrator reveals that he has heard a rumor that Bartleby used to work in a dead letter office - a job that naturally would have been crushing to someone of such a melancholic disposition as Bartleby.
Melville Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" describes the drudgery of daily life in an office. The reader learns about the title scrivener from a well-meaning, good-natured lawyer who hires Bartleby to help in the office alongside his relatively ineffective scribes Nippers and Turkey. At first, Bartleby seems a good fit in spite of his dour demeanor. As time passes, Bartleby loses all motivation to work. He starts to refuse
Bartleby the Scrivener, By Herman Melville The protagonist in this story by Herman Melville is the narrator, and Bartleby, a man of his own mind and a strong mind it is, is the antagonist. The narrator shows a disturbing lack of good judgment by coddling Bartleby, and begging Bartleby to cooperate. The narrator in this story represents the lack of human understanding in the business world of Melville's era. The thesis
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
Therefore, both characters failed to have positive reviews from their employer; yet, by compensation, they managed to remain employed. The discrepancy between the assignments they were paid to manage and the actual results in fact will weight more by comparison to the amount of work Bartleby would be able to achieve up to a certain point. Therefore, it can be said that one of the first characterizations of the
Bartleby the Scrivener Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is an alternately comedic and tragic look at the relationship between an employer and his employee, and examining how this relationship plays out reveals the complexities of managing a workplace and the sometimes overlooked nuances of the power dynamic present in this kind of relationship. The character of Bartleby represents the inversion of the narrator's own character and ideals, because he offers what
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