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Melville, Bartleby The Scrivener The Thesis

All the knowledge and wisdom he thinks he has gathered in years of practicing an easy, uncomplicated way of acting are of no use to him now. The old order of thongs and his firm beliefs are of no use when he is dealing with the case of Bartleby. Sometimes, the reader could suspect the narrator is actually looking at the scrivener and see his other self. There is a certain degree disobedience in the lawyer, too. After having discovered one Sunday that Bartleby practically lived in the chambers at No_ on Wall Street, the lawyer is still unable to dismiss him from his job and from his life: "I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breath one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind" (Melville, 2343). He is totally attracted by the strange character he is unable to communicate with. His determination to get through to him and then fell good about having done a good deed is weaker the more he discovers there is no solution to the problem and no easy or even complicated way out....

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There is no resonance, no echo, nothing he can hang on from Bartleby's part. He continues to be a black wall that does nothing away. Although, at some point, the lawyer will give up on Bartleby, he will have to come back to him once the new tenants of the chalbers at No._ on Wall Street will ask for his assistance in the case of the unwanted character who permanently inhabited the space. In this case, he is indicated as the person "responsible" for the poor strange creature who answers to any attempt to communicate with: "I prefer not to."
The end is to a certain degree revelatory since it provides an information regarding Bartleby's previous working place as "a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter office at Washington"(3355). The uselessness of the letters and the uselessness of the man who is hired to service useless purposes could be accounting for the roots of alienation. The turf that grows imprisoned is sign of hope, though.

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